The inspiration of Charles Camilleri

As an ex-composition student of Charles Camilleri, I would like to say a word of thanks to him and show my appreciation for all the help and encouragement he always gave me and to his students. I had the honour of meeting Prof. Camilleri when I was doing my B.Ed (Hons) degree in music at the University of Malta 10 years ago. I have followed his career since my early music studies as a violin student and when I first saw that he was listed as one of my lecturers on my timetable I was thrilled. But his true love for Maltese music was transmitted to me when I was pursuing my MPhil degree in music at the University of Malta. His charisma and enthusiasm to teach and his love for life were entwined in his weekly lectures.

It was at this time that he encouraged me to further my studies in musical composition. I was fortunate enough that for the last three years, before his infirmity, he was my composition tutor where he guided me through my doctorate studies and helped me enrich my musical knowledge and grow into a composer. Even during his convalescence, in his own limitations, he showed interest in what I was doing and his vibrant look gave me all the support I needed.

As the majority of the great masters, Prof. Camilleri's career went through phases, including nationalism, juvenilia and spirituality.

His latest music, dating from the late 1970s to the present, is both spiritual and cosmopolitan in nature.

Two modern masters are vividly conjured by this music: Messiaen and Feldman. Both composers, although working with very different ranges of sound, were grappling with the same challenge, namely, the expression of the spiritual and mystical world music. They both, like Prof. Camilleri as a famous accordionist, were attracted to open harmonies, gentle dynamics and deliberate pacing.

Prof. Camilleri is especially fond of the use of gentle, upward-sprinting whole-tone arpeggios, a signature device of late Feldman. Elsewhere, there is the use of Cage-like aleatory directions, as in Chemins, in which according to British pianist Murray McLachlan, "tempo, dynamics, timbre, and mode of attack are left to the discretion of the performer", as is the order of the music's rows. Some of the pieces, including the aptly named Machine Music from Chemins, and also movements from Cosmologies and Noospheres also feature an angry, rhythmic, atonal pounding that seems derived from Bartok or Prokofiev.

Prof. Camilleri's last work, before his stroke, shares the composer's fascination with the worlds beyond this planet, both physically and spiritually, as related by the titles of the sections and a generally spacey vocabulary of sonic gestures. His Symphony (2006) is an expression of "ancient" philosophies and ideologies.

His last movement is a manifestation of a pure, free sensation that triumphantly reaches a mystical state by the use of exuberant suspended chords heading towards nirvana, heaven.

Prof. Camilleri's music creates not stasis but something much more profound. It is the simultaneous experience of movement and stillness, and so a representation of one of the greatest theological mysteries - the ability of God to exist outside time yet to act within in.

"When one looks at that stretch of twinkling starts, their structure looks terribly disorganised, yet one does not feel threatened or unsafe. Rather the contrary is true: they are so beautiful that they fill us with awe," Camilleri said.

Thank you Prof., as I look at the evening sky, I will be seeing an added twinkling star.

May you rest in peace.

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