Jacob's Ladder
String figure ‘Jacob’s Ladder’.
Hands of António Sá-Dantas, photo by Judith Deschamps.
Jacob’s Ladder is inspired by the same named string figure: the never-ending ladder — a symbol of spiritual ascension — becomes a musical journey starting deep down, from the dark, rising up to the highest clarity, yet always circling back again.
The audience steps into a space that is already sounding, and given a piece of string on their way in. They are invited to join the musicians in doing the string figures. Each step taken to get to the string figure is like a step of the ladder itself, followed by the played section of the performance, that travels through music of different times, all of them stringed together by the idea of the perpetual ascension or fall, with music by Brunet, Bach, Sá-Dantas, Lutoslawski and ending in a musical embrace by Pärt.
Music
Soundscape of Shepard Tones
Brunet (orch. Sá-Dantas) — Victimae Paschali Laudes
Lutoslawski — Chain 1
Bach — Canon per Tonos (Musical Offering)
Sá-Dantas — Desire taught you (ii)
Pärt — Fratres
Performance Story
When the audience comes into the performance space, they are immediately greeted by a soundscape of intertwined Shepard Tones, and the musicians scattered through the space playing the cat’s cradle. Each audience member receives a piece of string and is welcomed to interact with the musicians, playing the string figures with them, or being showed how to do the jacob’s ladder string figure.
Shepard Tone
The soundscape is made up of two intertwined rising and falling Shepard Tones. This superimpositions of sine waves in perfect octaves (discovered by Roger Shepard) create an auditory illusion, giving you the impression of a tone that never stops rising or falling.
This is followed by the played section of the performance, with all the works below interlocked into each other without pause in between, creating a sense of a whole performance through different music.
Johannes Brunet (orch. A. Sá-Dantas) — Victimae Paschali Laudes
For a long time this work originally written for 5 voices, was attributed to Josquin Desprez. Now known to be by Brunet (fl.c. 1510-1530), this work sets the second part of the easter text for five voices. It is a work about mythical resurrection, moving out of death and darkness into the light - our first step through the ladder.
Witold Lutoslawski — Chain 1
Oscillates between earthy quirkiness, and dense desolate waves of sound. Lutoslawski creates a chain of events, reactive to each other in different characters, where the players have freedom to play by themselves - and enter in dialog with each other. A step into the ups and downs of life.
Johann Sebastian Bach — Canon per Tonos (Musical Offering)
Like all canons written in the Musical Offering, Bach offers a puzzle as how and when to start the imitation of the melody — this one is so that at the end it repeats one tone higher, potentially rising for ever, until it is outside of our hearing range, very much like the Shepard Tone that opened this performance.
António Sá-Dantas — Desire taught you (ii)
A series of interlocked canons that draw inspiration from Brunet’s and Bach’s works played in this same performance too. The story Kali décapitée by Marguerite Yourcenar serves as an inspiration. The goddess Kali, cannot stop herself from following her desires, losing herself with whomever she can find. She struggles through her path like the canons in the music: never stopping, always rising, never able to stop resisting to follow the other voices - only stopping when they get stuck, and start over again.
Arvo Pärt — Fratres
The final step of this journey starts with the highest point of clarity, and slowly brings us back down through a rainbow of instrumental and harmonic colours.
Performance History
May 2019
Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Royal College of Music London, 12.12.2018.
Embassy of Portugal, London