Unander-Scharin, Carl
SATB div + orgel
I lager
No. 4 from The Cloud of Unknowing
This work for choir and organ in six movements, is a commission from the Erik Westberg Vocal Ensemble with support from the School of Music in Piteå - at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. The composition builds on an astonishing text from the English medieval period with the name The Cloud of Unknowing. The text was written by an anonymous monk in the 14th century and revolves around the timeless question of how to understand and to know God. The only way to do that, according to “The Cloud” is to “abandon consideration of God’s particular activities and attributes, and to surrender one’s mind and ego to the realm of “unknowing”, at which point one may begin to glimpse the nature of God”.
For the textual compilation for the compositional work, I also included some sentences from The Book of Privy Counseling - another formidable work attributed to the same anonymous 14th c. author. The two books form a rich texture of complicated theological considerations, out of which I compiled six themes, which later formed the basis for the six movements in the choral suite.
