The composition is about the time interval between the opening and the closing of a door. The piece attempts to freeze that period, so that the corresponding time fragment is extended and a sound world is revealed.
The composition uses an excerpt from Dante’s ‘Inferno’ of The Divine Comedy, from the section where Dante enters Limbo, an area reserved for those who live into oblivion. The opening of the door and the frozen time metaphorically relate, in the composition, to the state of Limbo; the listener is trapped between In and Out, in a position which normally is not perceptible, a time fragment that belongs to oblivion.
The heavy sleep within my head was smashed
by an enormous thunderclap, so that
I started up as one whom force awakens;
I stood erect and turned my steady eyes
from side to side, and I stared steadily
to learn what place it was surrounding me.
In truth I found myself upon the brink
of an abyss, the melancholy valley
containing thundering, unending wailings.
That valley, dark and deep and filled with mist,
is such that, though I gazed into its pit,
I was unable to discern a thing.
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Canto IV (1-12)
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Aki Pasoulas 