PALIMPSEST

Alternative / Experimental / House

 

New age experimental chorus and spoken word with deep spiritual values.

We seek to find and present music and experimental dramatic work that promotes a collective consciousness and values of peace and understanding throughout the world.

Get a podcast of the "Palimpsest of Human Rights" by clicking through on this link:

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Get a podcast of the "Song of the Cloud of Unknowing" by clicking through on this link:

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Get a podcast of Richard Rolle by clicking through on this link:

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You can also hear podcasts of all these works on iTunes if you cut and paste the links here:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206933768

one hundred painkillers

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=207006821

book of ashes

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206939865

CSM

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206940473

igbo singing

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206227715

all one family sing

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206251762

choral explorations

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206228289

song of Judith

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206229410

thunder, perfect mind

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206228739

the fire of love

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206225985

the cloud of unknowing

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206229353

Julian of Norwich the showing of love

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206177857

the Saxon gospel

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206178364

the song of matthew

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206178112

the song of mark

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206178470

the song of luke

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206181002

the song of Thomas

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206178556

the song of John

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=206180923

the palimpsest of human rights


The first five tracks on this site are from

THE PALIMPSEST OF HUMAN RIGHTS

a simultaneously voiced adaptation of the writings of Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The other track is "They Say the Same Bright Angels," a choral setting by Michael Mendoza of a poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. The work was premiered on December 10, 2005 by Harmonium Choral Society at a concert in Morristown, New Jersey.

See video of this work by clicking on the link here:


Auschwitz video on myspace.com


Samples of Van Cleef's verse gospels are on this site under the artist name Spirit Song Text. To go there, click on the box:

ListentoSpiritSongTextatPureVolume.com

You can also hear the complete Spirit Song Text verse gospels on on iSound.com. Click on this link if you are interested:

Spirit Song Text on iSOUND.COM

The full texts to all four verse gospels are available for downloading from theworshipwell.org, a resource site of the Episcopal Church USA. You can access the files through this link:

Spirit Song Text (Jabez Van Cleef) on The Worship Well.org

Experimental alternative music by Jabez L. Van Cleef is also recorded under the artist name THE CHURCH OF THE SENTIENT MACHINE. Click on this box to go see:

ListentoCSMChurchoftheSentientMachineatPureVolume.com

Also, if you want to hear HARMONIUM, a choral society affiliated with PALIMPSEST, then click on this box:

ListentoHarmoniumChoralSocietyatPureVolume.com

ABOUT THE PALIMPSEST

For those who have never heard the word palimpsest: before printing was invented, monks in the Middle Ages would copy texts onto sheets of parchment, stretched sheepskin. If they ran out of new parchment, the scribes would keep copying on the sheets they had already used, writing on top of what was already written. Repeated overwritings created documents called palimpsests that may have been mostly illegible but that nevertheless came to symbolize the doggedness and devotion of the scribes.

The physical palimpsest is here extended to an aural experience. The work is an aural palimpsest because when it is read aloud it encodes some part of the utterance of each reader, while concealing some part of the others. It is defined partly by what is retained from the earlier statement, not entirely by what is intended or seen of the latter. Just as the mind of the reader struggles to decipher what is underneath, the ear of the listener works harder to discern the meaning of the intentionally obscured speech.

Here is how this book was written: from various sources I assembled prose writings of Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, and Henry Thoreau, making sure that the selected passages of each were about the same length as the others. I adapted these prose source materials into a common format by paraphrasing the text into metered lines (iambic pentameter), once again tailoring the length of each thread to match the others. I took the three parallel documents and, placing them side by side on my computer screen, inserted alternating lines from each source, to create three-line stanzas in a single unified master document. I call this process text weaving. The result is a long poem in which the successive lines are bound rhythmically but not always by meaning. In each stanza the first line is from Thoreau, the second line from Gandhi, and the third line from King.

Individual vs. Collective

It should be clear that I am trying to create an esthetic experience that draws on both choral singing and the spoken word. The purpose of text weaving, which is the underlying force behind this effort, is to allow an expression of the text which is simul-taneously individual and collective.

Whatever performance practice is used, I think it should preserve some element of the chaotic (aleatoric) to represent the formless sum of human consciousness from which our ideas concerning human rights have emerged.

Strictly speaking, I would like the audience to be anyone who senses that the notions of personal human rights and acts of civil disobedience to assure them are person-ally important. Perhaps this means that the performers are the most important audience. They are invited to take the text I have presented and express it so that it arouses awareness and commitment to the preservation and protection of our rights. If this means selective deletion of parts of the text, or tripling of voices on a line to give it emphasis, or transformations of passages into hip hop speak, or whatever, then let them go, so long as the main message is conveyed.

The main message does not adhere to any one line of narrative, it is in the connectedness of the commitment, the influence across generations of one person's ideas on the actions of another person, and the compelling power of the justifying expressions whereby these persons describe and disseminate their ideas and their actions.

I think that choral speaking, an art form that is nearly extinct, offers rejuvenating possibilities to other kinds of experimental performance as well as popular music like hip-hop. The undefined area between spoken recitation and singing is bounded by many avenues that creative performers should explore, especially if their intention is to teach.

Performance with Music or Dance

As I was writing this book, I often heard a kind of musical background. It was either a continuous wall of sound backdrop to the text during recitation, or interludes such as one hears in productions of Shakespeare. The wall of sound I heard was rhythmic and repetitive with elements of percussion or other instruments treated as percussion in the manner of Philip Glass. The point of the music is to support or reflect the pulsing of the recitation.

God is in three persons. Whenever three persons are gathered together in the name of God, God is there. The three persons who wrote this text did not live in the same place or at the same time, but now they are together. They are together in the mind of God, and they are together in your hand and your eye as you look here.

April, 2006
Jabez L. Van Cleef
aka Spirit Song Text

 
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tanacea

My band uses this great free service. I thought you
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posted Feb 25

 
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Location:  Madison, NJ

Members:  Jabez L. Van Cleef

 

The Palimpsest of Human Rights

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