photo credit: Creative Commons: Will G altered by evanchambers.net
Notes
Hestia’s Fire
Hestia is the ancient Greek goddess of the hearth. She took a vow of celibacy, and remained aloof from all the intrigue and pettiness of her sibling gods and goddesses. She does not star in any significant myths, and very few images of her exist. She instead dedicated herself to service, and having no temple of her own, found her place at each hearth and fireplace, at the center of every home. She is often called “the forgotten goddess,” and is sometimes said to have abdicated her position on Mount Olympus.
A piece about Hestia is necessarily a seasonal piece. In the late fall, as we descend into the darkness of the winter, it seems as if the warmth of the world is drawing away from us—the sun shrinks from the earth’s surface, the energy of growing things recedes downward. We are brought into stark awareness of our need for warmth and herein lies Hestia’s power. The fire that warms us at the hearth fuels our faith in the hidden inner light that sleeps at the core of things. With care, this light can be coaxed forth to warm the bitter cold of the deepest winter night. We need strong prayers to keep that faith, and I offer this music in that spirit.
The first movement is an invocation, calling out to our forgotten and neglected gods; it is also a lament for the hardening of our souls, a keening for all we have banished from our busy and disconnected human lives. The solo flute line draws on the inflection and ornamentation of Irish old-style laments, while the melodic contours have slight echoes of Albanian vocal music.
The second movement is a dance, beginning slowly with an Irish-style reel called “The Early Dark,” named in reference to the gathering darkness of Advent. A second tune, a jig called “Brigid’s Flame,” refers in its title to the Irish equivalent of Hestia. Brigid is the Irish goddess of the hearth, the forge, and poetry. She is associated with the Catholic saint Brigid, in whose name a sacred flame is kept at Kildare. (This tune also gives a tip of the hat to a jig by American fiddler Jeremy Kittel called “Disconnect”.)
The music unfolds in alternating tutti sections and impassioned solos characteristic of Sufi qawwali music as it builds through tightly-wound repetition. The flute soloist, instead of dominating the orchestra or beating them into symbolic submission with her virtuosity, instead joins them, building alliances and supporting the common endeavor, exhorting and leading the group upward and into an intensifying spiral as the music begins to turn.
The spinning dance that results is meant to create a feeling of centripetal energy that compels us in closer and closer to the center, winding tighter and tighter until it warms up the core to the point that the music can expand and ignite, like our hearts might, given enough heat and abandon.
The piece was commissioned for Kathryn DeJongh and the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra.
EC
Hestia is the ancient Greek goddess of the hearth. She took a vow of celibacy, and remained aloof from all the intrigue and pettiness of her sibling gods and goddesses. She does not star in any significant myths, and very few images of her exist. She instead dedicated herself to service, and having no temple of her own, found her place at each hearth and fireplace, at the center of every home. She is often called “the forgotten goddess,” and is sometimes said to have abdicated her position on Mount Olympus.
A piece about Hestia is necessarily a seasonal piece. In the late fall, as we descend into the darkness of the winter, it seems as if the warmth of the world is drawing away from us—the sun shrinks from the earth’s surface, the energy of growing things recedes downward. We are brought into stark awareness of our need for warmth and herein lies Hestia’s power. The fire that warms us at the hearth fuels our faith in the hidden inner light that sleeps at the core of things. With care, this light can be coaxed forth to warm the bitter cold of the deepest winter night. We need strong prayers to keep that faith, and I offer this music in that spirit.
The first movement is an invocation, calling out to our forgotten and neglected gods; it is also a lament for the hardening of our souls, a keening for all we have banished from our busy and disconnected human lives. The solo flute line draws on the inflection and ornamentation of Irish old-style laments, while the melodic contours have slight echoes of Albanian vocal music.
The second movement is a dance, beginning slowly with an Irish-style reel called “The Early Dark,” named in reference to the gathering darkness of Advent. A second tune, a jig called “Brigid’s Flame,” refers in its title to the Irish equivalent of Hestia. Brigid is the Irish goddess of the hearth, the forge, and poetry. She is associated with the Catholic saint Brigid, in whose name a sacred flame is kept at Kildare. (This tune also gives a tip of the hat to a jig by American fiddler Jeremy Kittel called “Disconnect”.)
The music unfolds in alternating tutti sections and impassioned solos characteristic of Sufi qawwali music as it builds through tightly-wound repetition. The flute soloist, instead of dominating the orchestra or beating them into symbolic submission with her virtuosity, instead joins them, building alliances and supporting the common endeavor, exhorting and leading the group upward and into an intensifying spiral as the music begins to turn.
The spinning dance that results is meant to create a feeling of centripetal energy that compels us in closer and closer to the center, winding tighter and tighter until it warms up the core to the point that the music can expand and ignite, like our hearts might, given enough heat and abandon.
The piece was commissioned for Kathryn DeJongh and the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra.
EC