I hope you will listen to this record in a dark room with your eyes closed. I hope you will listen when you can let go of time. I hope you will then watch the characters of time and purpose present themselves on the open stage of your imagination. And that you will ride the drama of timelessness as it unfolds, from its beginning all the way to its end, although it has neither.

But before you close your eyes, here are some thoughts I’ve been thinking for the last nine years or so, about what you’re hearing.

I call this record a modern oratorio. Oratorios were operas minus staging, costumes or props. Just the theater of the music and the words. Sung. Usually about a sacred topic. Often drawn from the Bible.

It’s modern because it involves the use of technology in primary music-making—drones and soundtrack collages of “found” sound—sounds made by the ensemble or me, altered, fractured, recombined—organic to the whole but disembodied in time.

ecclesiastes: a modern oratorio is drawn from the Old Testament’s Book of Ecclesiastes. Primarily Chapters 1 and 3. You may recognize the well-known poem from Chapter 3, from The Byrds’ 1965 hit song Turn! Turn! Turn! penned by Pete Seeger in the 1950s:

"To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die; a tie to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away.
A time to rend and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."

—from the Book of Ecclesiastes (Eccles.) 3:1-8, The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty’s special command. Appointed to by read in churches, Authorized King James Version (1611) or [KJV]

My path to setting these words to music has been indirect. Because ecclesiastes: a modern oratorio began life as music for choreographer Gina Gibney’s 2002 Time Remaining for six women dancers, the music has always focused on time: its mystery, its power, its incomprehensibility, its inevitability. Gina had been cautious about the inclusion of text when we started, even though we were working with singers, because she didn’t want to diminish the message of the dance itself. This biblical passage about time, we felt, would add a neutral aesthetic commentary because it was so familiar.

To finish out the seven time couplets, I found a portion of a lesser-known verse deeper in the chapter, and modernized the verb endings:

"That which has been is now, and that which is to be has already been."
—Eccles. 3:15, my translation or [KB]

Which seemed as magnificent and quintessential as I could ever hope for.

After our (mine and the Time Remaining Band’s, as my six-man ensemble came to call itself) collaboration with Gina Gibney Dance ran its course, I decided the music should continue life as an oratorio. There was more instrumental participation and more narrative purpose than a traditional choral song cycle, but it wasn’t the sort of drama I could see chopping up into the quick and sassy repartee of opera recite. There was dialogue but it was thoughtful and internal, often between a singer and himself, an instrument and a singer or even between two instruments.

To crystallize an oratorio narrative, I stripped out as much of the non-biblical text as I could, without undoing the ensemble’s vivid grasp of the existing piece, and returned to the Book of Ecclesiastes. I wanted to find out more about the context of the passage above: what led up to it and what followed.

Right away, I was confused by the King James translation of Chapter 1, which begins:

"The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem:
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor that he taketh under the sun?"
—Eccles. 1:1-3 [KJV]

This opening struck me as carping (1:2-3), nowhere near as magnanimous as the verses I’d set from Chapter 3. It was hard for me to understand how one preceded the other. Chapter 1 moves on to describe the grand cycles of nature, but those verses (1:4-7) close with a cryptic eighth verse in the King James Version:

"All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing."
—Eccles. 1:8 [KJV]

I decided there must be something about the early 17th-century (Hampton Court Conference of 47 religious scholars convened by King James in 1604-1611) translation I wasn’t getting. So I sat down and re-translated the first three chapters of Ecclesiastes myself, comparing the early 5th-c. Latin Vulgate and the Masoretic Hebrew of the 11th-c. Leningrad Codex with the King James for added insight into possible interpretations. (I am ever grateful to the Internet Sacred Text Archive for electronic access to this information.)

Here’s what I got:


"All these things are incomprehensible. We cannot fully behold them, nor consider their extent."
—Eccles. 1:8 [KB]

My translations differed from traditional interpretations in many respects. I wasn’t sure if I was right, wishful, or a liar so creative I fooled myself. So I studied further. What I found was beyond expected. The enigma of Ecclesiastes is a lens into the past. Interpretation shifts while elements remain, like pieces in a kaleidoscope. Thanks to Ecclesiastes, I have traveled the world. And I’m still traveling. Come along with me.

—Kitty Brazelton, 2010

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