Onar

[LP-album]

*** ONAR (LP-album) was my 1st recorded work. Later, it appeared also in a CD together with my 2nd LP-album BEATRICE. 
*** All LYRICS are translated in ENGLISH, in this web-page, and are excerpts of poems by HARIKLIA VASSILIOU. 
You may see them just below, along with some info on the style and the aesthetics of these compositions.
*** You may listen to ALL TRACKS – just click on titles. 

Onar cover

lyrics

all texts are excerpts from poems by HAR IKLIA VASSILIOU

barefooted goddess


Come my little mushroom

my very little mushroom, come

my vow, my hammock and my thread

I’ ll sing you a song

a song about the eagle

I ‘ll nod to you like a bat

come my little mushroom

my little one, come

Come to the East

barefooted goddess with your hair loose

barefoot on the poles I shall await you come to the East

barefooted goddess with your hair loose
wind and stone and water 
I’ ll be weaving

weaving the wind for you

the journey


It’s going to rain tonight, it’s raining I am telling you

I’ m leaving tonight, I’ m going I am telling you

There, to the volcano

there, to the scorched island

to the bottomless waters of Santorini

and you will seek me in the pumice stone

in the winds you will console me

Let autumn wait in the crystal glass

in the crystal glass winter awaits us

my love

time


I want to drink to his joyfulness

when he is playing with time

when he is playing with the time

that’s about to be born

Time is mute

a rolling sphere, time is a pomegranate

and the kiss of the orange

I met you yesterday, no

it was tomorrow
I met you yesterday, yes

it is today that I met you

the witch


Here in the city of the winds

I feel hunger

I drink to the last word of the day

I remember you

I remember you wet

and the witch winging around your hair

the image


She labour through burrows of red mud

and scatters her lovers to the five winds

She creeps into the sheets

and babbles

intoxication

Your soul is the caravan – serail of the planet

gypsies and reptiles, singers and charlatans

O is for navel

H is for Hermione

B is for beauty

D is for desertion

LP-ALBUM INFO

music compositions and leaflet’s sketches


Petros Theodorou

lyrics

Hariklia Vassiliou

song

Katerina Karatza

graphics design

Stelios Pseftongas

cover’s photos

Yiorgos Poupis

recorded and remixed

Vangelis Katsoulis (studio Spectrum)

produced

PODIUM (1989)

ABOUT STYLE AND AESTHETICS  in “ONAR”

“ONAR” is a composition for electronic instruments and voice.
This work participated and was awarded a prize at the “SOUNDSCAPE” Pan-European Competition of Musical Composition and Technology (Norwich, Great Britain).

In the songs of “ONAR” the forms are freely developed.
Each song is rather a collection (a chain) of “images” with different “moods” and emotions, following the different moods of the emotional scenario of the lyrics.
This rather “impressionistic” style of seeing the song form is a field that interested me very much and in several of my compositions after “ONAR” I attempted to structure my own aesthetic proposal.

In each image of the songs there is sometimes voice and orchestra and other times solo orchestra. 
So, the orchestra in “ONAR” is BY NO MEANS in the role of a simple accompanying sound.
Voice and orchestra integrate in an amalgam of complex melodic lines .
The sections of solo orchestra are autonomous stand-alone short pieces on presenting  instrumental variations of the themes of the song.

Moreover, “ONAR” It is the start of a personal exploration and proposal for the use of music technology means, so that “…an active relation between the composer and technology is maintained, as the composer, integrates in his intentions these amazing tools in surprising ways, referring to different aesthetic styles and without being limited in any technocratic framework…” (from a review of “ONAR” when it was present in “SOUNDSCAPE”).

This proposal about the use of electronics serving the creative intentions and not limiting them (see below, the leaflet note), was much further developed in my next works, “MUSICA PRACTICA” and “PHOENISSES”.

THE BOOKLET

This music represents my initial attempts (since 1987) to incorporate the possibilities of music technology into my composiitons.

The whole of the orchestral part, the sounds, and the manner of playing of the instruments (the “interpretatio”) have been generated by and structured in the computer. Still, they provided in the final result the necessary space for the human voice.

In “ONAR” I ‘have used electronics in musical styles in which usually electronics are not used: musical styles with no constant beat, with a lot of rhythmic fluctuations – “accelerandi”, “ritenuti”, “rubati”, etc.
I wanted to experiment with what these tools can do, how expressively can they be used in a lyric work.

As far as the style of the pieces is concerned, I opted for “references”, as a kind of tribute to various kinds of music that appeal to me. So the pieces contain references to the “sound – style” of Hadzidakis, Debussy, De Falla, folk songs, classical song, romantic period, etc.

As for the lyrics, their musical setting was based on the concept of a kind of dramatic “staging”.
So, I divided each Hariklia’s poem into shorter parts, “images”, which are narrated and “staged” by voice and orchestra.
Neither of these two elements may be said to play a more important part than the other – this is why I prefer to call “ONAR” a work for voice and orchestra, rather than a collection of songs.

This frequently resulted in strange, unusual forms.
Each piece can be viewed as a sequence, a “collage” of tiny, diverse parts of music connected under the framework characterising each piece.
This was another challenge by “ONAR”: to blend conceptually and aesthetically in each piece these little and different between them parts of music in a coherent whole.

Together with Katerina we decided to use her wonderful and many possibilities offering voice in a rather modest way.
We also decided to keep her interpretation out of emotional exaggerations, so that the balance between the voice and music roles would be better served.

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