Babylon by David Gillingham

The TCU Percussion Orchestra performs "Babylon" by David Gillingham on 11-14-2019 at PASIC 2019. The piece was commissioned, premiered, and recorded by the TCU Percussion Orchestra. Published by C. Alan Publications (http://c-alanpublications.com/babylon/). Posted with permission of the composer and publisher.

Babylon was recently commissioned by the Texas Christian University Percussion Orchestra, Brian A. West, conductor. The piece is programmatic and inspired by the story of “The Tower of Babel” from the book of Genesis in the Bible:

Genesis 11:1-9 (New International Version)
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel— because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

The piece is divided into three sections that follow the story, “Land of Shinar,” “Tower to Heaven,” and “Confusion of Language,” each with its own theme. The “Land of Shinar” theme is built upon a sequence of chromatic mediant chordal progressions. “Tower to Heaven” features a rising theme using mostly rising fourth/descending fifth chord progressions. “Confusion of Language” is a 12-tone row and the section features different variants of the row (inversion, retrograde, retrograde inversion) and different permutations to emulate the confusion of languages. The “Tower to Heaven” theme cycles throughout the whole work. Deviating somewhat from the original story of Babylon, the “tower theme” emerges from the “Confusion of Language” section as a reminder of the infamous structure built by the people of Shinar before they were scattered throughout the earth. The piece ends mystically and quietly, as it begins.

-Notes by the composer

Видео Babylon by David Gillingham канала TCUPercussion