The Garden of Roses
The text for this piece comes from The Legend, a poem by Alexey Pleshcheyev, which, in turn, is a free translation of Richard Henry Stoddard's poem, Roses and Thorns.
This text is permeated with religious symbolism yet remains humble in its simplicity: the young Jesus was growing roses in a garden to weave himself a wreath, but then preferred to give the roses as a gift to his friends. In response, they wove a wreath of thorns, and mockingly crowned Christ with it.
This simple yet profound parable is a clear allegory of the dramatic events of the Holy Week. The poetic text sounds like a prediction of the Earthly path of Jesus Christ towards the inevitable Golgotha. There is a well-known music setting of this poem by Tchaikovsky. He chose a couplet-strophic structure for his composition, while I perceived it in a different, ternary form.
The first section portrays the image of a beautiful mystical garden, as if an Earthly incarnation of Paradise. On this background, alto solo, and then soprano, tenor and bass introduce the beginning of the story. In stark contrast, the next section depicts the crowd of teens bullying the young Jesus. Here, my intention was to create a theatrical, perhaps even cinematic scene of a brutal blasphemous dance.
The sufferings of the young Jesus grow into a musical symbol of the Crucifixion at the climax of the composition, foretelling the last hours of his Earthly journey. In the final section the original image of the garden returns. The garden which seemed to have been lost forever, comes back to life. It is reborn and resurrected just as Christ was resurrected, reversing the passage of time. The last bar of the composition resembles the first bar. The sonic flow makes a circle and leads into infinity.