Music as an illuminated cathedral of sound. A safe haven, far away from the everyday rat race. For how can a composer get a grip on that ocean of time that flies by, how can he express eternity and transform it into sound? It sounds like a wise lesson from the time of early music. In the Renaissance composers continually paid homage to God. Time was of God and God is eternity. But in post-war process music Father Time is also cunningly captured. It turns out that eternity can also be fabricated.

Somewhere between this old and new world lies composer Anthony Fiumara’s music. He aims to write timeless music that is sheer beauty in itself. Compositions that move you instantaneously and that can be understood immediately, like the sacred light art of James Turrell.

Fiumara believes music should sound like one huge sonorous mass. The preceding process is clear and elegant and the listener can understand it. In his orchestral work Aperture the music fans out over the audience like an ecstatic rainbow of sound. At first Fiumara even used to start from scratch in strict pieces such as Solo for Bass Clarinet. Music carved from a handful of notes.

More recently Fiumara has become less strict. Proper melodies emerge from the dense musical texture. This more spontaneous approach can be heard in Aerial for piano and orchestra, which will be premiered in March. Fiumara’s music makes a free flight under the hands of keyboard pilot Ralph van Raat. With a knowing compositional look at Laurie Anderson’s hit song O Superman: ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah……….ad infinitum.

Mark van de Voort