Cartesian Theatre
for large ensemble

This work consists of numerous short musical units of different characteristics: stylistically they can be hymns, snippets of serialism, modality, classicism, speed metal, free jazz, associative signals etc. These units of a virtuosic nature, or signs, are placed in quick successions creating longer segments. Signs recur at unexpected moments consolidating a strong sense of expectation and memory within the composition. Since the signs possess a strong referential quality, memory and expectation also reach beyond the borders of the piece (music history, different cultures, perhaps even non-musical elements). This constant gunfire of signs the listener is submitted to gets a new meaning when in a sudden shift of character the piece finds itself in a reflective modal closure.

The title is based on the concept of the Cartesian Theatre identified by philosopher Daniel Dennett as ‘a metaphorical picture of how conscious experience must sit in the brain.’ In music, just as much as this ‘picture’ is a performance of external inputs, in the composer’s brain it can do the same with imagined stimuli. So, simply, one could say that an actual performance by musicians of a composition is the imitation of imagery already performed in the Cartesian Theatre of the composer’s brain.

The way the piece presents itself to the composer in the Cartesian Theatre is a formless state of multiple experiences, reaching across the borders of itself due to the referential implications of the numerous signs. The composer is then to sift this multifaceted and quickly changing stream of consciousness into a unified form and transport it via the performers to the listeners, who will subsequently experience this – as I prefer to call it - flux of unlimited semiosis in their own Cartesian Theatre.

The work was commissioned and financially supported by the Birmingham Conservatoire as a result of winning first prize in the 2007 New Millennium Composition Competition. It received its first performance in Birmingham in March 2009 by the Thallein Ensemble conducted by Nicholas Cleobury.