PREMIERE PERFORMANCE ON YOUTUBE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Nvdyk-ZUI
Sophia, a housewife.
Where do the pipes lead?
Into the belly of the world.
Where the Archons descend through the pipes, there the Eternal Light also ascends.
One pipe – one path – one pipe, as the old mystical wisdom says: "As above, so below."
The toilet.
Not as a mockery, but as an altar.
The latrine – the old mother, the dark vessel.
Her name is the twin of the lantern.
The latrine… Laterna.
Both give birth, both receive.
One collects light, the other dung.
But both are vessels of Light.
And so: the Archons and the Eternal Light come through the same pipe. However, it is the Eternal Light that rules over everything, because even in dung it shines, even in a pipe it sings,
Even in a latrine it is at home.
František Chaloupka
****
Structured in three movements, Sophia et Archons is a contemporary chamber oratorio inspired by the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia, a mystical scripture from the early centuries of the Christian era. Composer František Chaloupka delves into the ancient myth of Sophia — the personification of divine Wisdom — who falls from the higher aeons into Chaos in a misguided search for Light, only to be slowly redeemed through prayer, memory, and inner transformation.
Rather than offering a literal setting of the text, Chaloupka constructs a ritualistic sonic space where voice, machine, and silence interact. The soprano, echoing the laments of the fallen Sophia, navigates shadowed registers of sound — both human and electronic. The music evolves in a language suspended between austerity and mysticism, rooted in the expressive traditions of the oratorio yet refracted through surrealist, steampunk-inflected sound worlds.
Each movement represents a phase of Sophia’s journey:
I. Descent — A loosening of order; the voice trembles, disoriented, as light fractures.
II. Lament — A slow unfolding of loss; mechanical and human elements interlace in quiet revolt.
III. Threshold — A fragile reconstitution; memory and name align, and Sophia rises, altered but luminous.
This work is not a depiction of doctrine, but an invitation into an interior myth — one where brokenness and grace coexist. In Chaloupka’s setting, Sophia does not return unchanged: she returns having known darkness, and made light within it.
***Sophia et Archons (2025) gnostic oratorium for soprano, piano & trumpet
61-page score / Composed for Lichtzwang Trio
Premiere 24.6. 2025, Kaple božího těla, FFUP, Olomouc, CZ