Time Will Pronounce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
September 14, 1993 (United States)
| Time Will Pronounce The 1992 Commissions | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 photo by John Bellars | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | June
1, 1993 (UK) September 14, 1993 (United States) | |||
| Recorded | June 12, October 19, and November 19 & 21, 1992 | |||
| Studio | St. Augustine's Church, Abbey Road, and St Michael's Church (London) | |||
| Genre | Contemporary classical music, chamber music, minimalist music, art song | |||
| Length | 64:21 | |||
| Language | English | |||
| Label | Argo | |||
| Producer | Michael Nyman, Michael J. Dutton | |||
| Michael Nyman chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [1] |
Time Will Pronounce: The 1992 Commissions is a 1993 album by Michael Nyman, his eighteenth release. Nyman does not perform on the album, but he composed all the music, produced it, and wrote the liner notes. The album contains four compositions. The album is dedicated to the memory of Tony Simons, "friend, manager, and generous and courageous survivor." The album is named for the second and longest of the four works, the only one featuring a former member of the Michael Nyman Band, Elisabeth Perry.
13:55
- William Hunt, bass viol
- Richard Campbell, treble viol
- Julia Hodgson, tenor viol
- Wendy Gillespie, treble viol
- Richard Boothby, bass viol
- Assistant engineers: Alex Marcou & David Forty
Inanna is the Queen of the Heavens in the Sumerian religion. Nyman found the text on February 12, 1992, in a translation by Samuel Noah Kramer in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament edited by James B. Pritchard (3rd edition with supplement, Princeton University Press, 1969), in the personal library of an Armenian friend. In the hymn, Inanna speaks proudly of all that her father, Enlil, has given her, and it takes the form of a list. Its audacity, shamelessness, and repetitive structure appealed to him, and thought it would be suitable for James Bowman's voice. He became even more interested in setting the work when he learned that Inanna is well-known deity embraced by many feminists, and not obscure, as he had initially thought. Indeed, she superseded all Sumerian deities, male or female, by the end of the Sumerian civilization.[2] In spite of the last stanza of the piece being the most repetitive, Nyman chose to use cadential diversity rather than repetition.
The work was first performed June 11, 1992, at Christ Church, Spitalfields in London. The recording was made the following day at St. Augustine's Church.
Time will pronounce
20:35
- Elisabeth Perry, violin
- Melissa Phelps, cello
- Julian Jacobson, piano
- Assistant engineer: Chris Ludwinski
The title of Time will pronounce is derived from the closing lines of Joseph Brodsky's "Bosnia Tune." Nyman uses the word "generally" five times in describing the nature of the work—violin and cello independent of piano, alternating tempi without motivation, use of harmonics, and so on. The piece premiered July 14 at the Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham.
The convertibility of lute strings
15:06
- Engineered by Tony Falkner
Commissioned by neurologist Anthony Roberts for Virginia Black, a fellow student with whom Nyman studied harpsichord at the Royal Academy of Music, the title refers to a late sixteenth century practice to which Christopher Marlowe refers in his book, The Reckoning on the death of Christopher Marlowe, in which lute strings were popular to use as a commodity with moneylenders when money was not available, but Nyman states that this is completely irrelevant to the piece, and that his only musical reference in it is to the closing section of his own opera, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, because the piece was commissioned by a neurologist.
This work was first performed November 19 at the Purcell Room in London, and was recorded at St Michael's Church in Highgate two days later.
