parana river

Description

playlist can be found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3m4L74RA8A&list=PLTUlTwlsdlFQ971rrQ6CoTR89_R--TTNw Itaipu / The Canyon (resp. 1989 / 1988) Itaipu originated as Philip Glass' response both to nature and to a modern technological wonder, the great hydro-electric dam, by far the worlds largest, now being completed at Itaipú on the Paraná River that forms the border between Brazil and Paraguay. Everything about this project is astoundingly huge. Half as high as the Empire State Building and almost five miles wide, the dam backs up a lake of 563 square miles. Any of its 18 generators alone could handle the entire flow of the Potomac River; they are so enormous that the Brazil Symphony once gave a concert inside one of them. Philip Glass visited Brazil's spectacular Iguassú Falls in June 1988, accompanied by friends who also took him to see the dam construction site nearby. (Igassú was not submerged by the man-made lake at Itaipú, but the falls at Sete Quedas, the world's largest by water volume were.) Touring the immense ducts and massive turbines, he marvelled at the act of imagination through which humankind has transformed nature, an undertaking comparable in daring and inventiveness to the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. He immediately dropped the ideas he had been developing for the Atlanta commission and conceived the present choral-orchestral work inspired by Itapú: "I looked at it and said, I know the piece!" With the music already forming in his mind, he began to look for a text. Friends in South America soon came up with what he considered the perfect solution, a creation myth of the local Guraní Indians, for whom the Paraná River is "the place where music was born." In their language "Itaipú" means "The singing stone" and refers to the unique sound of a loose stone that once vibrated in the rapids at this location. While the music itself hymns the wonders wrought by nature and by humankind, the exotic text recounts the creation of the world, the actions of the gods and how the first people came to this special place. This seeming dichotomy will not be surprising to those familiar with Glass' portrait operas, for there too, the text is frequently in an exotic language, is usually compiled from sources already in existence and is used to supplement rather than duplicate the thrust of music and action. These words will be understood by practically no one among the audience (or performers), and the composer prefers the distancing this inevitably causes. He hopes the music can succeed as pure music, as a work of art inspired by something palpable and dramatic.