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Title:  PASSAGGIO
Composer:  FRANK MORANA
Medium:  MIDI
Duration:  40 MIN.
Composed:  SEPTEMBER 2002
Remarks:  2nd Septet for flute, clarinet, horn, two violas, cello, and piano, based on Monody for organ (1969) by Olivier Messiaen

. . . on the passage of purified souls from the realm of the spiritual to the realm of the the celestial.

This is my "breakthrough" work, wherein I perceived that I had at long last learned to compose. It replaces and supercedes the identically-scored 1987 Septet, as a more definitive sequel to the 1987 Duets and Trio, which now, taken as a whole, comprise a full program of chamber music in which, like Bach's Musical Offering, almost every instrumental line is canonically determined.

The title refers to a revelation which first appears, so far as I know, in the psychic-spiritual writings of James E. Padgett (1852–1923), wherein the "spiritual" realm is seen as the totality of possible places to which the soul reposes after physical death, while the "celestial" realm is that series of places which are reserved to those who, in addition to their having attained moral and intellectual perfection, have also received into their souls the Divine Love of God.

Between the two realms there lies a small transitional sphere, and it is the experience of this transitional sphere that I have attempted to capture, by drawing on the help of one of the great musical mystics, Olivier Messiaen.