Symphony No. 5 (2022)

Movements:

David's Symphonic Feat
Solomon's Temple of Time
Infinite Variations
Light in Ascent: The Illumination

Note from the composer:

IMy fifth Symphony is, by a far greater measure than may be measured as seen or heard in my first three symphonies, a work which may be heard and recognized per force of its construction as a “classical symphony.” This Symphony wears its kinship with its older brother -my Fourth Symphony though the two works are polar opposites.

"In the Shadow of No Towers" and the present work share a kinship reflected in these two symphonies as one upon one another by virtue of the two being polar magnetic opposites. On the one hand they mirror one another: this fifth symphony reflects the preceding one by the manner with which it projects brilliant electric light (just as the earlier symphony carries within it a certain formal mirror of light by being cast entirely out of the darkest matter and composed of shadow.

I composed my Fourth symphony from dark matter and it abides in the world of shadow; giving the definition that only such darkness may grant and cast. Now the materials which I drew upon when composing my Fifth symphony were sourced from the world of brilliant, dazzling -radial electric light.

Whereas I composed my fourth to bear by the structure of its panes and panels the destruction of structural panels; the demise of architectonic structure and whereas I accomplished this through the very presentation and means of shadow bearing to the formal shapes of those looming titanic structures which are its subject and which had been destroyed and forced into the consigned realm of memory, I constructed my fifth to bear witness to construction in live and real time; I composed it, in other words, as architecture and of architecture-taking form in illuminated and brilliant prime time.

And crucially, I composed my fifth to be -I intended it by daily design to be- a "classical symphony."

These two words ("classical" and “symphony") are the manner of choice by which I convey the work’s essence and this is because these two words best describe the architecture of what is composed into form in this symphony as this architecture had been ordered by my hand and given to me by orders of invention.

I also choose these two words because they best convey the proportions of my fifth symphony as well as the dimensions of it.

Finally I choose them as they describe this symphony’s design to bear a certain self-aware sensibility about itself.

The words “classical symphony,” in short, embody and express this symphony’s spirit just as I had invented and calculated it.

I wrote down these two words (“classical symphony”) on the very first page of the score and on the very first day I started my work on the score and the two words remain written in the very same place and remain totally unaltered, unedited, unearned and unchanged in the finished manuscript of the score as it sits.

There they are, then, just as I had written them on the day I had sat down to lay the foundations of the whole work.

The four movements of the Symphony sing by symphonic measures and in symphonic voices of the symphony "it-self."

This symphony is not a symphony "about the symphony;” rather it is the symphony as the symphony or “the symphony as it-self” or perhaps, to deploy a more poetic device, we may freely imagine it as the symphony “in its own words.”

The first movement of the symphony is emblematic of the whole singularity and it is as good a point as any to convey the entire work by conveying a partition of it.

I bore in my heart as to be my conscious inspiration for this first movement the very first symphonic constellation divined and envisioned by King David.

David envisioned and listed forth a synthetic mathematically derived constellation and listed it dependent for the formation of it upon the binding truth of its harmonic law and upon this mathematical principle solely.

The quarters of the constellation in his vision are, taken together, a symphonic cube made to sound “as one”; a multiplicity, in fact, sounding “as” the singular symphonic cube.

King David enumerates his "symphonic cube” with subtle and precisely expressed technical nuances as to be derived, by inevitable force of its calculus, the singular "new" voice which he announces. By “new” he announces a form which had neither been heard by any man prior nor ever had it been envisioned by any man prior to his exposition of this “canticum novum”.

In the first movement of my symphony I ordered a presentation of the orchestral quarters and composed this explicitly and in a manner which would be forced that it be heard and seen as deliberately composed. These four quarters of the four-part symphonic choirs unfold as such throughout the form of the work.

At first instance in the introduction where they are heard in fragmented four-part chorales and after this in grand exposition; a sharply composed construction which by its presentation exposes the symphonic cube to be heard as well as sounded evidently and obviously to the ear and apprehension and as to be truly known therefore by sensible persons and known in all of the architectonic details of this harmonic shape and form which are the form of the first movement as it-self and the symphony in a larger part as it-self.

The first movement reveals it-self in its own voices and does this in "real time;" I unfolds all four grand voices of the four partitioned choirs of this symphonic cube (the orchestra) with great deliberation and I did this in metrical as well as formal harmonic terms; the four partitions are sounded as to assume a cubic form presented by their sound in resounding and in sounding and in resonance to this sound also and all such voices as are made by the synthetic instruments of the orchestra are, naturally to sound either as sound which is struck into being or as sound given form by the movement of the wind through its structure.

The two foundations of all sound (that all sound is made either by striking or by breathing) establishes the forms of the flute and the lyre which signify the two methods. These two methods thus alternate in this symphony and in such alternation I have composed the birth of the symphonic cube to be heard as it happens-live.

The cube is revealed then following the proceedings ordained by due process of its form.

I proceeded to map forth and to present and order whereby I composed the proceeding of the four choirs of four; each of them four choirs formed of four voices each and each which form a single choir of four choirs and all these contributing as four choirs together to become the symphonic shape we hear.

All four voices of each of the four choirs sound as to be heard as a single choir as well as in partition as part of the four choirs which themselves must all resound to be heard as the greater union-the symphonic singularity.

The first of the four choirs is composed in a manner by which I wished to demonstrate an order and that this order be primarily revealed through the exposition (first of four) of this first movement (of four movements) and this first order, then, is the order sounded by the four part choir of the brazen winds; instruments which are given to sound through the contrived motion of wind as air is blown and made to be driven upon the wind which is sent resounding through the winding brass tubes.

These first sounds of the exposition are heard clearly as sounds of shimmering brass; sound from those terrific tubes; hollow, labyrinthine; animated by wind which causes them to buzz in resounding tremors; a wonder of metalic machinery; I expose their voices (as I treat each of the four quarters of the whole orchestra in such loyal manner by compositional design) as their own voice and in and through their own voice- four voices and these are: the Trumpets; the Horns; the Trombones and at the foundation the merely named "tube" (tuba).

By such quick flight of time by which they follow in pursuit of the brass as to catch up to the brass and in catching them join as to be wholly attached in metric fugal flight to them the second chorus joins with the sounds of that first chorus. I composed this construction of the choirs as made to sound and resound together in four voices and now four plus four (not eight) voices. In the second choir of this grand quartet of quartets you may hear the voices which resound by the instruments of their strings; strings struck; struck by bows; plucked and struck by hands- struck and hit so that the air which is within their bodies might quiver and resonate and thus be disturbed to sound.

In first part of this chorus are the primary violins; in second part are their counteracting secondary partner violins; in third part of tenor are the violas; in fourth part of the quartet the 'cellos sing the harmonic bass of this four part choir at once engineered by such inevitible harmonic architecture as binds the orchestral quarters to resound with the doubling contra-basses (see them in the manuscripts of Haydn and Mozart written upon the same single staff as the celli ("cello e contrabassi") and sounding naturally in the same breath. The quartet which pursues is comprised of the four parts of the wooded winds taking us back from the resonance of struck sound to that which sounds through the movement of air through their forms: the flutes; the oboes; the clarinets and the bassoons are the quarters of this partition of the four quarters of the orchestra. The fourth (of four) quartets pursues in flight as inevitably as to be now ordained that they join by sounding the glories of the final quartal partition of four voices; now returning to arising sound struck into existance. Here resounding are the membranes and "percussion" properly crowned as they must be by the four hemispheric constructions- the orchestral drums called, by David, the "tympani".

The percussive spheres resound and again are sounded in a double exposition, then in a development where the summation is a double fugue (of two by two) and then in a cubic synthesis; a crowning recapitulation upon the movement brought into singular unity and I composed all of these in such order of four partitions to chart a journey made in fact as sounding and as heard singing with the glory that these are the "true" vocal quartets of the grand quartet of four quartets called the symphonic orchestra: the tympanic membranes; the wooded winds; the strings struck; the brazen tubes breathing with fiery life. I present an order showing these quarters just as codified when they were sung in the first instance by King David himself at the moment he saw a vision of this symphonic cube in the constellar forms of heaven.

The inspiration I drew upon as my breath of life by which I composed and animated the order of this first movement is the very inspiration I drew upon consciously as I composed the entire symphony- wholly taken in the order of standard bearing.: four movements.

This inspiration came to me through daily observance of how beautifully King David remains enthroned in the eternal shape of truth which he had revealed and by observing also how affirmed once and again and again King David’s prophetic vision resonated with such nobility as though celebrated in renewed coronation after coronation as formally emblazoned in the triple helix of every symphony following after every other symphony and leading backwards in this way to my fifth symphony; a symphony as symphony.

These testaments each encoded in their own matrix and by their own voices nevertheless sing together symphonically bearing to the majestically constructed constellation of this heavenly shape; all of these symphonies encoded by their own composers had been granted by the hands of many the singularly evident symphonic architecture in and of all of them: they all bear in one way or another the brilliant harmonic truth as to be known to be symphonies by it and by the eternal symphonic shape engineered of each and all symphonies when the old masters made their symphonies precisely so that by their very intention and encoded designs these symphonies might sing to be that very form which is the form and also the subject of my fifth symphony.

My fifth symphony is a work in which I had explicitly and consciously composed so that I may cause by such composition and by and through the work composed this symphony and the symphony to sing itself and to celebrate itself.

I composed it and calculated this symphony to do just that and I did this by and through the voices of the symphony (orchestra) itself.

If a singular voice may be left to be heard from this great multiplicity then here a voice singularly singing to reveal a wholly spectacular and yet compelling illusion: the illusion we hear of such multiplicity of four quartets sounding together in simultaneous manner to brilliant dazzling illusion which renders us able to hear enormous multiplicity all sounding “as one”; one body and one soul- sounding as a unified and recognizable symphonic "self".

-- Mohammed Fairouz (2023) The Fifth Symphony was Commissioned by ADMAF and the London Symphony Orchestra