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Voces Mysticae

from Oracle by Randall Hall

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about

Voces mysticae was composed in 2017. The title literally means ‘mystical voices’ and refers to non-lexical (non-sense) words found in ancient Greek magical and mystical texts. Sometimes these words appear as garbled Greek, Hebrew or Egyptian words, at other times as long strings of vowels, and in still others as clusters of consonances. But in all cases, they carry ritual power. The voces mysticae should never be translated or altered in any way because it is the sound, the sonic quality of the words, not their meaning, which empowers them as divine symbols.

An important source for the voces mysticae is the Greek Magical Papyri (in Latin Papyri Graecae Magicae, abbreviated as PGM). This is a magic book compiled in Egypt from the first century BCE to the fourth CE. The PGM includes spells for everything from turning invisible to curing headaches, to rituals designed to induce mystical experience – a reminder that in the ancient world there was no clear distinction between magic and religion. The PGM moves seamlessly between passages written in Greek and untranslatable voces mysticae. Although these formulas lack any lexical meaning, many have very intentional formal arrangements, such as palindromes or systematic patterns of transformation. The transformation of patterned sound without linguistic content comes very close to a definition of music, and in this piece, I wanted to explore the musical possibilities of the voces mysticae.

I was also struck by the similarities between voces mysticae and the Kabbalah – a form of Jewish mysticism that includes meditating on word transformations to achieve visionary states. Words are transformed to create new incantations through three principal techniques: notarikon, where a single letter is replaced by a group of letters, a sort of reverse acronym; temurah, where letters are substituted through a process of letter exchange (e.g. A Z, BY, etc.); and gematria, where a word is replaced by another word with the same numerical value. Exercising my artistic license, I integrated these Kabbalistic techniques into the compositional process.

The first movement, Abulafia, is named in honor of Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291), the medieval Spanish Kabbalist who developed a practice of contemplating words and letters. The title of the second movement, Akrakanarba, is a magic word found in the PGM, while the final movement, Auioeoueei, is an invocation I created myself. The musical form of each movement is based on its title, the letters of which go through various Kabbalistic transformations to generate new strings of letters. Each letter is assigned a musical motive and these are arranged in the score such that the music ‘spells’ out the title and its transformations. As each letter-motive reappears, it also undergoes its own musical transformation again based on Kabbalistic procedures. In this way, I wanted to write a piece that was not only inspired by the voces mysticae, but actually encoded them in the music by working out Kabbalistic procedures musically.

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from Oracle, released June 19, 2020

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Randall Hall Rock Island, Illinois

Saxophonist, composer, and improvisor Randall Hall moves at the sonic limits of the instrument to delve into the mythic, the esoteric, and the apophatic.

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