San Juan de la Cruz: Noche Oscura

Verse 4

Aquésta me guiaba

más cierto que la luz de mediodía,

adonde me esperaba

quien yo bien me sabía,

en parte donde nadie parecía.

Saint John of Cross: Dark Night

Verse 4

It guided me

more surely than the midday light

to where he waited,

who well I knew,

there where no one appeared.

Translated by Eric Rosenbloom. Copyright 1999

To Where He Waited belongs to a series of pieces inspired by poetry of St. John of Cross. These compositions explore instrumental sonorities that lie on the border of hearing. In To Where He Waited, cello predominantly produces colored noise. The concealed pitch becomes heard as the color of timbre. The electronic part uses the MAX/MSP implementation of the two-dimensional waveguide mesh physical model designed by Julius Smith and Gary Scavone and ported to MAX/MSP by Dan Trueman. The model represents a membrane—a sonic barrier, which is excited by the cello signal. The cello sound is heard only when it passes through this virtual wall in MAX/MSP. A number of models were tuned to the pitches derived from the letters of the poem. The electronic part combines the real-time and pre-recorded sonorities of the resonating models.

To hear some audio examples, click here: Example 1 (J. Kojs, cello, MP3, 940Kb), Example 2 (J. Kojs, cello, MP3, 780Kb).

Click to view the score exmples.