Passacaglia – Music for Orchestra IX

The composer Jay Schwartz, born and raised in California by German immigrants and who himself emigrated to Germany, and who sees himself as a „Wanderer“, a wayfarer, continues his orchestra series with a new creation for Teodor Currentzis and his Utopia Orchestra on the subject of the Wanderer, by musically commenting on the timeless problem of emigration, migration, of outsiderdom and the search for identity. By using Schubert’s timeless Journeyman theme, Schwartz brings Schubert’s isolation in his society into a contemporary context in the light of the role of the individual in the collective, between isolation and society.

A passacaglia, originally literally „to pass or cross the street,” represents a musical journey.

In Passacaglia - Music for Orchestra IX, the Wanderer appears from a Schubert song: Schwartz quotes seven measures and sends them on a journey twelve-fold through a network of seemingly endless glissandi - continuous sliding tones, the omnipresent characteristic of Schwartz's oeuvre.

Through the ancient Greek numeric context of the seven celestial bodies and the twelve astrological signs, an earthly journey becomes something otherworldly, which Schwartz in turn sees as pointing the way into inner spiritual space, a projection into the vast expanse and freedom of the spirit.

*Commissioned by Utopia Orchestra and the Schubert Projekt Fonds