Ex motu
- Anna Zawadzka-Gołosz

The work is dedicated to the memory of Krzysztof Droba, Polish music theorist, critic, teacher, commentator, musical life animator, friend of many composers who accompanied their creative thoughts. I composed this music thinking about the riddle of the captive mind and the fight from captivity... Those unfinished talks with Krzysztof. 

The thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas seemed a good reference for shaping the idea and form of this contextual work.

Thomas Aquinas was a brave man, a genial, open mind. He integrated the thought of Aristotle into Christian philosophy, despite the looming charge of heresy. Trusting God, he also appealed to the mind, combining religion and intellect in scrutinising the essence of the world. 

Ex motu (“from motion”) is the first proof for the existence of God, introduced by Thomas in his work Summa theologica (the so-calledfive ways).

The simple intellectual deduction was based on the assumption that if there is motion, there must be a first “mover.”

The concept for shaping the sound matter of this work followed that trope: various forms of motion and various moves summon different entities to existence, implying a special kind of dependence; the work’s premise was to find entities that are sometimes unpredictable, “free-thinking motives” that after being “moved,” reach their own identity—sometimes a surprising one—seemingly from another discourse. 

A small “move” can trigger a big movement, such as a small pebble triggering an avalanche and a “chain of events,” it can also be a “blow in the straw” that creates a “bubble.”

The form of Ex motu become an attempt at grasping a “landscape in process,” the relationship between construction versus deconstruction, a mass of sounds versus a small point, complexity versus simplicity. 

Humans aspire to creating a “theory of everything” (a synthesis of theory of relativity with quantum mechanics), finding a single principle for the enormous universe and minuscule atom. Yet the most important thing is probably rapture (over the “creation of the world”), which frees us from the vanitous conviction of possessing the rights of a land owner, a tree owner or bird, the lessee of someone else’s mind... 

There is one small thought in the soundscape of Ex motu, a certain “lyrical, old-fashioned note”: a motif in the cello, harp and piano... in memory of things unfinished. 

Anna Zawadzka-Gołosz