Beyond the Walls of Jericho Paul Dolden

“Beyond the Walls of Jericho” is the third and final work in a trilogy of works I call the “Walls Cycle”. The three works are perhaps the most intense sounding music I have ever created in t he studio.

All three works were inspired by the biblical story of the Walls of Jericho, in which sound was used to collapse walls and create social change. This third works extensively with human subjectivity, which it also dissolves into anonymous massed textures. This subjectivity is represented by the multi tracking of “free jazz” gestures and colours. I recorded dozens of free jazz musicians honking, screaming with the motives of this work on their horns. At 45” you hear the same music played extremely softly with the microphones placed almost on each instrument. (Listen to educational materials=37 Beyond the Walls of Jericho. Inverted sound Worlds. ) In the original program notes, (see: Original CD booklets), I refer to these dense simultaneities as representing a collapsing of meaning, and creating a perception of absence and stasis. Then I argue that these moments allow for a remapping of experience and existence or, in other words, allow us to reinvent ourselves. In this way the revolutionary history I have been exploring becomes in the end a personal existential choice to create our own reality because we are free to do so.

  • Year of composition: 1991
  • Format: Fixed media
  • Duration of the submitted work: 17:19

More works by Paul Dolden