{"id":3067,"date":"2011-09-07T13:41:18","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T18:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/?p=3067"},"modified":"2011-09-07T13:44:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T18:44:10","slug":"luminous-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/projects\/2011\/luminous-body\/","title":{"rendered":"Luminous Body"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Luminous Body is a collaboration between me and Craig Lucas, written in the period immediately following our narratively charged opera Two Boys. Luminous Body is, as a result, abstract and poetic in gesture and form. The text interpolates, among other things, stylized versions of the teachings of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and Plato; these are scrambled and re-contextualized and, in a sense, serve as background for the textures of the combination of nine male voices and orchestra.<\/p>\n<p>Part 1 introduces the chord structure that governs the entire piece, and ends with the repeated words, &#8220;only your will is your own.&#8221; The second and third parts, loosely dealing with the Devil and the importance of choosing one&#8217;s words, are based on drones generated by the voices and the strings; the constant (but slightly morphing) texture is meant to be meditative and vague. I have always wanted to set the Beatitudes, and Craig has paraphrased them beautifully here; the tenors intone the word \u201cblessed\u201d over and over while the strings and winds reiterate the passacaglia from the opening of the piece. The fifth and final part is a series of proverbs. The orchestra begins in a series of loose, ecstatic drones, which increase in intensity (&#8220;Make your own family!&#8221;) until we jump suddenly to the garden of Gethsemane, where Christ was betrayed while his disciples slept. &#8220;Why are you sleeping? Couldn&#8217;t you stay awake for one more hour?&#8221; he asks, while the strings and winds lazily chant in the background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Luminous Body is a collaboration between me and Craig Lucas, written in the period immediately following our narratively charged opera Two Boys. Luminous Body is, as a result, abstract and poetic in gesture and form. The text interpolates, among other things, stylized versions of the teachings of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and Plato; these are scrambled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3067"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3071,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions\/3071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}