This profound work of
electronic music on three CDs is based on the composer's complete immersion in Tibetan Buddhist teaching, and takes its title from
Thomas Merton's
Trilogy on Death: "Going beyond death in this life, beyond the dichotomy of life and death, and so to become a witness to life itself." The first "chapter" is
"Kyema," composed during the years 1985-1988. It was inspired by texts of the
Bardo-Thoedol (a book of the dead) and "evokes the six intermediate states which constitute the 'existential continuity' of being: Kyene (birth), Milam (dream), Samtem (contemplation and meditation), Chikai (death), Choenye (clear light), and Sippai (crossing and return)." The slowly changing timbres create quite physical resonances and density modulations, suggesting encounters with traveling personalities, some comforting, some evoking deep and strange spirits.
"Kyema" is dedicated to the composer's son
Yves Arman, who passed away in a car accident shortly before its completion. The second chapter,
"Kailasha" (1988-1991), is "an imaginary journey around the most sacred of the Himalayan mountains, Mount Kailash," but since the mountain is considered a "natural mandala," the work also attempts to recreate the illusion found in works of visual artists
Albers and
Escher, where one perspective overlaps and flips over into another, involuntarily. The composer considers
"Kailasha" to be "the most chaotic part of the trilogy" and deeply unnerving.
"Koume," the third chapter, emphasizes the transcendence of death. The title of
"Koume"'s fourth subsection quotes the Bible in Corinthians XV ("O Death, where is thy victory?"): "Ashes of illusion becoming light. Descent to the deepest, where the spark of life is. There, Death is born. Death becomes birth. Actively re-beginning. Eternity -- a perpetual becoming." ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny
