"To me there is something remarkable about a compact disc, a little circular object zipping around and around in its rectangular box, spinning out sounds and thoughts and dreams -- seemingly forever," said Music Professor Paul Moravec. "CD could stand for 'circular dreams' as well as 'compact disc.' "
And "Circular Dreams" is just what Moravec chose to title his recently released compact disc, a collection of chamber music on the Composers Recording label.
Moravec's collection includes four pieces composed between 1985 and 1991.
The first of four selections on the compact disc, a quartet recorded in 1991, is also called "Circular Dreams."
"The title suggests the way the principal themes in this piece repeat and evolve as they describe spiral trajectories through time," Moravec said. "The musical narrative follows the progress of recurring dreams as they continually leave and return to their points of origin, further enriched and intensified with every cycle."
Moravec composed "Open Secret," a piano trio and the second selection on the compact disc, while at the American Academy in Rome on a Rome Prize Fellowship.
"My temperament at the time was very much affected by the strangely harmonious existence of classical ruins with the monuments from all succeeding historical eras in that most enchanting city," Moravec stated in the compact disc's liner notes. "Some of the music materials here ... recall an ancient flavor, and reflect my desire to use traditional, perhaps anachronistic, materials in a fresh context."
"The 'open secret' is that the raw stuff of present and future invention is always around us, ever available to be renewed and refreshed," Moravec continued.
The piano solo "Music Remembers" composed in 1985 enforces the idea of music as a "record of our thoughts and emotions," Moravec said.
"It begins with a series of brief contrasting juxtapositions: mercurial, violent outbursts alternating with snatches of tender lyricism," Moravec wrote. "These sections gradually become longer ... and settle into a groove until at last the music evaporates into the ether, disappearing entirely."
The final selection, "The Kingdom Within," is divided into four long sections which follow "the contours of an inner spiritual landscape," Moravec said.
"Circular Dreams" is Moravec's second release this year.
In February, Moravec released "Spiritdance," recorded by the Slovak Radio Orchestra, and "Sonata for Violin and Piano" will be released in August on BMG/RCA Classics.
Moravec also has other projects in the works. "I am writing a violin concerto for a particular violinist. It typically takes about three months to write one, so I should be finished by August," Moravec said.
Moravec has composed over 50 chamber, lyric and orchestral works as well as many film scores, music theater pieces and electronic works and his music has been performed in the U.S. and Europe.
Moravec teaches classes in "theory and composition and opera and music theater," he said.
