DESCRIPTION:
The Prelude of Agrippa's 3 Books written for bass clarinet quartet by Cornelius Boots, commissioned by Chamber Music America.

Edmund Welles, live at Old First Church in San Francisco,
September 18, 2005.

Find the album here:
https://www.cdbaby.com/edmundwelles

This piece was commissioned by a New Works Grant in 2004.
It was premiered and an album featuring it was released in 2005.

Stay tuned for the release of the full original, handwritten notation for four bass clarinets, plus bonus materials...
http://www.corneliusboots.com/performance/edmundwelles/agrippas-3-books-sheet-music/
http://www.edmundwelles.com/

At that time the players in Edmund Welles were:
Cornelius Boots: bass clarinet
Aaron Novik: bass clarinet
Sheldon Brown: bass clarinet
Scott Hill: bass clarinet
special guests for this concert were
Ralph Carney: contrabass clarinet
Ben Goldberg: contra-alto clarinet
Jonathan Russell: conductor

Agrippa’s 3 Books by Edmund Welles

This multi-movement piece delves into the expressive and rhythmic extremes of the four bass clarinets and is primarily inspired by occult philosophy and heavy metal music. Each movement draws inspiration for form and content from some tangent connected to these topics. By focusing on the themes of duality and interconnectedness, the musical direction of each movement becomes generally a union of two genres, or at least abstractions of genres, in which the bass clarinet has been historically and conspicuously absent. With the dawn of the Single-Reed Conspiracy, this will no longer be the case.

Prelude: The Conspiracy Manifests
[preparatory church music]

Edmund Welles has performed gospel music and sacred Renaissance music and motets: the unity of sound found in these styles is befitting to the bass clarinet quartet. This is a very simple Prelude in the spirit of the church’s “settle in for the service” message. It also foreshadows the chorale of Cause & Effect.

Three Books of Occult Philosophy
by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1531)

Seeking to categorize and explain all of the elements of the whole. Searching for mysteries and hidden truths. Exploiting the power of ideas, numbers, and harmonies. Bringing together disparate extremes and placing them in the same compendium. Dispensing Knowledge through creative expression and the ability of breath & air to move the soul.

“The single most important text in the history of Western occultism.” This is the prevailing description of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy. I discovered this work when exploring the simple & profound views of music held by occult philosophers in the Renaissance.

“Musical Harmony also is not destitute of the gifts of the stars; for it is a powerful imaginer of all things, which whilst it follows opportunely the celestial bodies, doth wonderfully allure the celestial influence, and doth change the affections, intentions, gestures, motions, actions and dispositions of all the hearers, and doth quietly allure them to its own properties, as to gladness, lamentation, to boldness, or rest, and the like; also it allures beasts, serpents, birds, dolphins to the hearing of its pleasant tunes.”

Like much of the profound content of Agrippa’s Books and occult philosophy in general, the truth and depth of thoughts like these is often lost in present-day. Agrippa, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Pliny the Elder, Aristotle and others had a profound insight and respect towards all elements comprising our perceived, unperceived, and intuited reality.