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The Rite of the Black Sun was chosen to represent the US at the 1986 International Society for Contemporary Music World Music Days in Budapest. Written for percussion quartet, it was inspired by a verse text by Antonin Artaud entitled The Dance of Tutuguri: Rite of the Black Sun. Although this text frequently alludes to a peyote ritual among the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, the key to its interpretation can be found in the Biblical book of Revelation, chapters 6-11.

Symmetry plays an important role in this work. Artaud's text is in nine sections of unequal length, and the music likewise divides into nine corresponding verses. They grow shorter until verses 5 and 6, after which they expand again. There is a rhythmic symmetry as well, as in palindromes based on the numbers 5 and 7. The rhythmic symmetries exist on several levels at once: as cells of varied length, as patterns of interaction among the four performers, and as precise gestures that begin, sustain, and end the sounds.

Because Artaud's text interweaves Christian and Indian imagery, I have tried to make a similar blend of the Christian and the Indian in my music for this quartet. --Anne LeBaron

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