a piece for wind quintet and microtonally-tuned electric guitar (2019), c. 11:30

If you’re interested in performing Atmavictu, please contact me at benliebermanmusic@gmail.com.

Program Note:

There is a story that I first read as an eighth grader that has stuck with me for some twenty years now. It concerns the first dream that Carl Jung, the Swiss analytical psychologist and subject of my middle school “famous persons” project (the one where you dress up as the person and give a presentation to class, offensively bad accent and all) can recall having.
I won’t get much into it here. Suffice it to say, there is a meadow, a descent down a stone stairway into a subterranean chamber, and an encounter with a figure, terrible and awe-inspiring, standing upon a magnificent golden throne, gazing upward. Many years later, Jung found a name for this figure:

Atmavictu – the “breath of life,” the creative impulse.

Atmavictu is a piece about recurrence and imitation, concealment and revelation. It is about stone stairways that lead to subterranean chambers, about childhood, dreams and waking, and finding peace with the unknowable. There is a bit about the harmonic series in there, too.

Atmavictu is dedicated to my mother, Wendy Fortunato, who, in addition to giving me a fantastic suggestion for a famous persons project, also first gave me music.