Joel Rust

Pieter Bruegel’s 1562 painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels depicts the conflict between the archangel Michael and the forces of heaven – rendered with white robes, elegant wings, and flowing hair – and Satan’s rebel angels – which have taken all manner of grotesque forms, chimeras of human, animal, and artificial elements – each totally different.

Aside from these strange entities, two things stood out to me. A pillar of angel bodies – innumerable powerful beings locked in a battle beyond understanding – stretching into the distance represents the unfathomable scale of the conflict, of which Bruegel depicts a minuscule slice, in space and time. But, stripped from its narrative context, the painting would become even more bizarre: an expanse of writhing, seething, weird matter. This piece pans between these different layers and characters, bound together by the narrative of the rebel angels’ fall.

The opening quotes Nicolas Gombert’s motet Media vita in morte sumus – ‘In the midst of life, we are in death’ – written at a similar time and place to Bruegel’s painting.

Perusal score available here.

Beyond the Heart was commissioned to share a program with Sibelius' Seventh Symphony, one of my favourite pieces. The motif that dominates the first section of my piece has a reference to Sibelius' opening, and more broadly, my musical language here draws on the Romantic gestures of Sibelius' work.

The piece also moves in the opposite direction, separating the orchestra into small groups or individuals who act almost independently of each other, sometimes with the same goals, at other times opposed. The conflict between sweeping gestures and these more atomised processes is the central thread of the piece; its title, Beyond the Heart, reflects this tension.

This recording was made by its commissioners – the Melos Sinfonia, conducted by Oliver Zeffman.

Perusal score available here.

Text by David Troupes.

Perusal score available here.