Monument

MONUMENT
orchestra
Duration: c.5 minutes

Program notes:
MONUMENT is a short orchestral work, originally intended as the first movement of a since-abandoned multi-movement sinfonia. The movement explores a single enormous harmony, spanning seven octaves, by highlighting and combining different registral areas in a manner inspired by the shifting of mottled light on a large stone. It is dedicated to and written as a monument in memory and honor of victims of unjust violence, guided by the words of Pope St. John Paul II in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor:

“Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator.”