Secret Chiefs 3 : Ishraqiyun - Perichoresis

"This is the first recorded composition to introduce Spruance’s evolving system of musical ideas patterned upon specific geometrical relationships found in certain polyhedra, and some tesselating patterns derived therefrom. In fact the other pieces in Song Cycle 3 are more directly-related to polyhedra, whereas this piece takes a cue from the techniques discovered in the process, and applies them instead (with good reason) to several senses of the term 'Perichoresis'. The word derives from the Greek “chora”, or ’space’ / Latinized “khoreia” or ‘dance' (verb form “chorein”, ’to make room’, ’to go forward’), attached to the particle ‘peri’ meaning ‘around, about’ --as in perimeter, peristyle etc. There are three rhythmic layers of the Ishraqiyun piece that are ‘choreographed’, in ways mirroring the static sense of 'mutual-indwelling' described by the term Perichoresis in the early part of the term’s history. The composed music is but a static snapshot of a process that is itself endlessly dynamic (hence the verb form ‘perichoreo’ being more akin to a performance than a recording). In a comprehensive article on the subject, Danut Manastireanu writes, “Lampre translates perichoreo as ‘encompass’, ‘alternate by revolution’, ‘pass into reciprocally’. ‘It indicates a sort of mutual containing or enveloping of realities, which we also speak of as co-inherence or co-in dwelling. It is the dynamic process of making room for another around oneself.” How perfectly all this describes the structure and essence of the actual music presented here. With simultaneous time-signatures and motifs oriented around rotating vertices, all moving in graceful patterns around a central point on three coordinates ---delicate re-orientations of musical emphasis according to slight shifts in the movement of spirit, making room for other interpretations or ways of hearing or feeling a rhythmic pattern. With 3, 4 and 7-fold (and therefore 21 and 28-fold) symmetry (and oft-seeming asymmetry) one's hearing rotates and spins depending on which of the vertices has drawn the listener’s attention. Perhaps simply mirroring some small facet of the beauty of the Trinitarian dynamics (in what is really just primitive and profane music), even here the Stoic sense of “mixture” can be heard yielding to the more Nazianzan, Nyssan and Maximillian notions interpenetration, rotation and dance."

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