Esau's Hunger for Double Guitar Orchestra & Electronics by Anselm McDonnell

Описание: Esau’s Hunger is a reference to the Biblical scene in which Esau, hungry for food, sells his birthright to his younger twin Jacob in exchange for a meal. The story reveals not only Jacob’s deceptive nature, but the carelessness with which Esau despises God’s gift for him, selling it to gratify his insatiable desire for what is material and short-term. This piece - and the poem which inspired it - uses Esau’s appetite as an analogy for the desire for wealth that fuels our destructive use of resources; short-term gain that impacts both the lives we have been given, and the creation in which we live and have responsibility over.

The musical material is primarily noise-based. The two guitar orchestras are combined with electronic parts to create four landscapes, the textures taking inspiration from the sounds of the natural world and the sonic qualities of machinery. Most sections are notated in a free tempo, which results in mass crowd textures as each musician performs the material individually.

Esau's Hunger by Anselm McDonnell

Famished from the hunt,
He primes the insect-carriage with a cough of smoke.
His killing-songs are engines,
And the throaty hum of locusts.

Clumps of raw sod cling close,
Left as the metal tears their neighbours from the loam.
No art to this. No sheer blade.
Only the sullen thud of the blunt at its nadir.

All for the reddish pulp,
Sterile food that pleases eyes and plumps the wallet.
Esau’s hunger knows no bounds,
Nor is he sated though he feasts again.

Deeper wealth conceals itself -
Wonder that springs unbidden from my craftsmanship.
But his soul howls for baser lusts.
It burns for grotty coin
Tarnished with the fetid stink of my bloodsap.