Into Silence
Time, silence, light, reflection, and transcendence are all explored in Jane Antonia Cornish’s new album, Into Silence. A breathless fragility on the precipice of liminal space imbues the album’s six over-arching linear meditations; each work an inquiry into the transitory beauty of the unknown, through self-reflection and the conscious reorientation of perspective. These hallmarks of Cornish’s aesthetic experience, along with the exquisitely balanced unfolding of her material, all contribute to a highly expressive and brave musical narrative that is unafraid, and, once heard, cannot be unheard.
The six works featured here are not only unified conceptually, but also through their instrumentation; each features a subset of an aggregate ensemble of violin, piano, four ‘cellos, and electronics. Throughout, Cornish brilliantly uses a carefully planned unveiling of instrumental sonorities to actuate and propel the over-arching design of the album’s broader narrative.
Memory of Time (solo violin and four cellos) explores a distant nocturnal pathos as the solo violin’s expressive presence floats, suspended, over the ‘cello ensemble’s irrevocable sighs. The titular Into Silence I incorporates piano and electronics into the sonic tableaux of the proceeding work, reorienting the seemingly unappeased yearning of the introductory material with a tender earthbound comfort. Scattered Light, scored for ‘cello alone, expounds an unbridled moment of cadenza-like virtuosity. As the harmonic rhythm increases and intensifies the work concludes in an evaporated calmness. Elegia returns to the sound-world and material of the album’s opening work (Memory of Time), now examined through the aperture of elegiac reflexivity. A meditation on solitude, Into Silence II, for piano solo, probes some of the album’s most inner-directed moments of isolation. Luminescence (scored for solo ‘cello, three ‘cellos, and electronics) is a culmination of the entire album’s exploration of liminality. The electronic component returns with an exquisite and arresting subtly of hushed empyrean filigree. A solo cello momentarily transforms the sighing motif of the opening into a hopeful upward reach towards transcendence. The work ends in deliquesce silence, and the album concludes with a return of the opening motif, exemplifying the elegant notion that silence is the path to transformation.
Jane Antonia Cornish is a British Academy Award winning composer who grew up in England and lives in New York City. In the world of film scoring, Cornish composed the music for many films, including the drama “Fireflies in the Garden”, starring Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds and Willem Dafoe.
