Pastorale. Music/Theatre by Trevor Wishart - ACE124.2

Trees and mist. God saying, "And in the beginning I created all this. I don’t seem to spend much time down there these days, but occasionally I do get requests, and I’ve just received an official invitation from a Mr Trevor Wishart, an experimental composer. Apparently, he wants me to make a personal appearance in what he describes as a musical version of the creation story. I can see that I shall have to find out more about Mr Wishart and his little project – and this means a visit to England – to York. Ah, yes, there we are. Now, let’s see what Mr Wishart has to say for himself in his application for my presence, shall we? Ah, yes. Pastorale. For flute, tuba, a Skinner box cum mechanical clock, four stuffed birds and a stuffed fox; thunder, lightning, rain; deus ex machina; magician’s vanishing cabinet, etc. A recasting of the Kyrie for Bach’s Mass in B Minor for mechanical clock with automated figures, animated in the style of a seventeenth century opera concerning the creation of the world as told in Genesis, viewed as a laboratory experiment in a Skinner box, after the ideas of the behaviourist psychologist B F Skinner as described in his novel, Walden II." God is not impressed by his first sight of Trevor Wishart’s house. Trevor Wishart talks about parallels he saw between Skinner’s novel, Walden Two (1948), and the story of Adam and Eve, and how he thought of parodying Skinner’s idea by setting it in the context of the original myth. God arrives at his door, watches Wishart building a box and continues reads the description of the piece.
God creating. Brings Adam and Eve from a cabinet. Wishart’s VO explaining why he wanted "to cast God as a magician". God’s VO suggests looking at earlier versions of the creation.