Magma Chambers
for chamber ensemble
(2 violins, viola, and cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, and harpsichord)
(-) First performance: 2018, Waking the Giants, Lismore Hall, Lismore, Victoria, Australia; Tarella String Quartet, Sonus Wind Quintet, Peter Hagen (harpsichord), Johanna Selleck (cond.)
Program notes
Composed for the Waking the Giants festival in 2018, the decet Magma Chambers is a musical reflection on Mount Elephant and the surrounding volcanic plains of Western Victoria.
In the music, after a calm introduction, clarinet and viola present a dissonant and rhythmically interlocking counterpoint in inner voices of the composition's texture. The Mythological story of the quarrel between the giants Djerinallum and Buninyong which led to the characteristic breach in Mount Elephant's scoria cone inspired me to write this counterpoint.
The composition consists of a series of free and overlapping variations on this counterpoint. Thus, the inner voices of the texture also bring forth the whole of the composition and shape the musical surface topography. The volcanic phenomena inspired different strategies for varying the counterpoint. As a whole, the composition expresses the unpredictable looming of eruptions from glowingly potent Magma Chambers under a dormant surface.
(Stefan Hakenberg, 2018)