I began composing "who has travelled this path before you" in the fall of 2019 not knowing what it was or who it was for. As it would turn out, I was composing it for myself as a gift and practice during the first weeks and months of our global pandemic.
“who has travelled this path before you” is a melody without beginning or end written on a large (approximately one metre by one-and-a-half metre) piece of paper that I kept pinned to the wall near my desk. It is a melody that is not meant to be played from beginning to end, left to right across the page. Rather, the player is invited to journey through the melody in their own way and time, forging a path tone by tone (beginning anywhere, ending anywhere): getting lost, retracing their steps, finding their way, stopping to rest… This way of thinking about melody shares much with the work my friend Emmanuelle Waeckerlé (
www.ewaeckerle.com), who often plays with relationships between walking/wandering and melody.
I have spent many hours with this melody, playing it on my melodica or imagining new paths in my mind's ear.
The two recordings on this album were each recorded as single sessions using a Zoom H4N in the workspace my wife Laura and I were able to use during the first year of the pandemic. I recorded each session in the early evening, the doors and windows open, inviting the outside in.
I am grateful to Ryan Seward (
ryansewardmusic.com) for his generous help with mixing and mastering. The album art is by my brother, Benjamin Brandes (
instagram.com/benjaminbrandesart/).
I trust that you will find a welcome place within these recordings.
Blessings on your journey,
Daniel
FROM THE SCORE
not knowing where to begin
trusting that you already know how (even without knowing).
an innermost silence,
journeying ever-deeper tone-by-tone.
in time,
finding yourself
in a wide and peaceful space*
not knowing where to end
trusting that you already know how (even without knowing).
* "a wide and peaceful space" is borrowed with gratitude from Eva-Maria Houben's “the table of silence" (2018) (
evamariahouben.de)
released February 23, 2021
Composed and performed by Daniel Brandes
Mixed and Mastered by Ryan Seward
Album Art by Benjamin Brandes