Product Details

 

Jonathan Peters

Beauty Beckons

© 2004 Jonathan Peters (783707984223)

Genre: Classical/neo-romantic

Instrumentation: Includes string orchestra, piano + flute, piano, orchestra

Description: Music depicting beauty in all its’ forms

 

 

 

“Every experience of beauty points to infinity."
-Hans Urs von Balthasar

Everyone is drawn to beauty. Whether it be a star-filled night sky, a newborn baby, or the sweet sound of a cello, we are all attracted to it on one level or another (depending upon one's level of wonder and capacity or ability to perceive it). But what is beauty?

The great minds of the past and present defined beauty as that which has unity, harmony, proportion, wholeness, and radiance of form (or essence). Thus, using these criteria one can really and truly say that one thing is more beautiful than another. Beauty is something real, something "out there" and not only present to the eye of the beholder.

Due to the huge advances in physics, microbiology, and biochemistry, scientists are discovering more and more that the universe ("uni-verse" - a whole that is also united as one) is unbelievably ordered and thus beautiful. In fact beauty is their number one tip-off to a theory or mathematical equation being true. The natural world is intelligent, comprehensible and our minds are able to understand and conform to it.

Many of the leading scientists of today both admit and believe that all of what we see did not happen by random chance. Art demands that there exist an artist to have created the art. No one in their right mind would believe that all of the thousands of notes on this CD somehow randomly fell into the right sequence in order to create the music you hear. And the universe is infinitely more complex than the music on this CD! From the earth's precise position and tilt to its' complex ecosystems, from binary stars to diatoms, from the miracle of water to the human eye - from the very first microsecond of time up until the present day - all required an intellect with infinite precision and foresight. Who can honestly believe that nature has done more through random chance in the design of one human cell than the designers of a computer have with their intellects? Man has not been able to come even close to replicating the information storage, energy, mechanical intricacy, and self automation present in one single human cell! Yes, the universe is breathtaking in its' design. Truly it is the greatest work of art.

This CD is my tiny contribution to the beauty in the universe. My hope is that people open their eyes to all the beauty in front of them every single day, to be honest with themselves about how this beauty and order came to be and what it points to. Beauty, truth, goodness...all lead to the same end...to the One who is Beauty, who is Truth, and who is Goodness itself.

About the compositions:

The Serenade for Strings "Life" is divided into two parts -existence (1st movement) which deals with human life as actuality, and essence (movements 2-5) which deals with the nature of human life and how it exists first in the mind of a creator.

The Sonata for flute and piano was composed as the first part of a 12 day engagement gift for my wife Jennifer (who plays flute). My wife is the most beautiful thing in my life. Beauty flows from her mind, soul, and body and she is evidence everyday to me of a good God.

The two bonus tracks come from two different decades. The Chaconne in A minor was composed at age 14 and was written for two pianos. I include it here because it is a good example of beauty through order and structure in form, and yet has freedom of creativity through variations (as in nature). Don Quixote in America on the other hand is of a totally different genre (film music) and was written as a commission for the Cypress Pops Orchestra in 2003. It is a tale of the great lover and defender of everything beautiful, good, and true - Cervantes' classic character, Don Quixote de la Mancha, set in present day America.

 

 

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