Arden, Jeremy: True Self

Jeremy Arden’s True Self is a monothematic composition in three movements. The title was inspired by various sources: the words of the Buddha, who proclaimed ‘true self’ as one of the four noble qualities along with purity, eternity and happiness; the Delphic Maxim ‘know thyself’, inscribed above the door to the temple of Apollo and put into the mouth of Socrates by his disciple Plato; and the rationalist philosophers of the European Enlightenment who established the idea of the individual possessing an interior truth.   The theme and its variants are continuously explored throughout — the same actor, as it were, but in different costumes, lighting and sets. The first movement is a playful, dreamlike song; the second, a tango in an offbeat groove; the third, a fiery furnace leading to a molten ending. Each movement is longer than the previous one, so intensifying the emotional effect over the work as a whole.