The word GONG is saturated with associations: the splendour of the Orient mysticism drama loud metallic clangour violent impact etc. The present piece draws upon all those connotations but it is primarily a symphonic drama about the life and behaviour of the sun our closest star and prime source of life on Earth. Describing the sun in music is not a new idea of course; during a visit to Greece Carl Nielsen was inspired by the orbit of the sun and its very un-Danish ferocity and thus wrote the 'Helios Overture'. GONG is a 'Helios Overture' too of sorts albeit more abstract. Recent astronomical research shows that the surface of the sun reverberates like a gong infour different simultaneous tempi (not directly depicted in the score though); the sun looks like a GONG - the O in the written work looks like the sun; there is even a solar research group called GONG (Global Oscillation Network Group). Formally the composition follows the life and fate of the sun from the initial explotional birth through the hyper-activity as energy source as we know it today to the final predicted flaring up and collapse into a so-called 'white dwarf'. But - being a musical composition not an astrophysical thesis - GONG is brought to its compositional conclusion by a 'real concert-ending' a chord taken from the middle of the piece and sustained over several bars from virtual nothingness to full force.
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