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Gemma Peacocke

Peacocke: Seven Sermons to the Dead

Prix habituel $ 66.00

Expected to ship in about a month.

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Oronoa (Gemma Peacocke)  |  SKU : ORON-0031
  • Composer: Gemma Peacocke (1984-)
  • Format: Book & Audio Access - Format guide
  • Instrumentation: Piano, Electronics
  • Work: Seven Sermons to the Dead (2020) (opt. drum kit)

Description

for piano, electronics, and optional drum set

Programme note

In the early part of the 20th Century, prior to and during World War I, the philosopher Carl Jung experienced intense and extended periods of vivid hallucinations. He thought of these experiences – in which he encountered scenes of absolute destruction and spoke with animals and demons – as visions, and he later came to think of them as the nucleus of the rest of his life's work.

Jung detailed his psychic encounters in notebooks and later transcribed them into a secret illuminated manuscript which he entitled Liber Novus (more commonly known as The Red Book). The final part of Liber Novus is "Seven Sermons to the Dead," which Jung apocryphally ascribed to Basilides, a real-life early Christian Gnostic religious figure. The Sermons read like descriptions of psychosis – it is almost impossible to follow the thread of the visions – some of sexual obsession and lazy misogyny – and the purported meaning inherent in them. What does emanate from the beautifully illustrated pages is a chilling sense of isolation, with dark apparitions hovering at the edges.