read other reviews

CLASSICAL GUITAR, August 1997

Clear Light, Magic Body

by Param Vir

Review by Stephen Kenyon


This edition marks the long awaited publication of one of the most strikingly original guitar solos of recent years. Not only is this work refreshing in its liberated approach to guitar harmony, texture and sonority, its inspiration in the profound world of Tibetan tantric art supplies a useful and effective ground for the vivid and very challenging musical language employed. Param Vir is India’s leading composer in the western classical genre, and though some slight reference to Indian music are present, this is predominantly a highly developed product of the world of western contemporary music.

The first examination of this score suggests a considerable pre-occupation with extreme mobility, with rapidly fluctuating single and multiple lines ranging over the fingerboard. Experienced closer to tempo these movements resolve into a more measured rhythm of events centred around peaks of expressive intent coinciding with the culmination of the composer’s use of modes of limited transposition (a la Messiaen). Colour in instrumental terms is also very important, and this is largely a very subtle orchestrational affair, with plucked chords, and the particular effects of arpeggiations in various parts of the tessitura. There are also, however, moments of grander gesture in abundance, making the colouristic sphere of the composition appear to work on two levels, the overt and the more covert.

The technical requirements of Clear Light, Magic Body are extremely high, though the musical sense required is at least as advanced as the sheer gymnastic facility necessary to bring off the combination of sonority, harmonic sense, development and, beyond all these, a remarkable essence the like of which is rarely found in guitar repertoire. The score is reproduced in the impeccable script of the work’s dedicatee, Jonathan Leathwood. I will refrain from predicting any particular fate for this highly important work; however any recitalist or extremely dedicated post-graduate player will find a wealth of musical invention and value, which justly deserves the greatest success and acceptance in the repertoire.