The following article by Stephanie Moore was first published in an issue of the Music Gallery's former periodical, Magizone, under the title "Finding An Audience".

In Paul Klee’s 1910 painting, an emaciated angel in a black cloak is suspended in mid-air. Its wings are spread as if a tremendous wind is pushing it backwards, while it faces the viewer with an expression of horror on its face.

This painting, ‘Angelus Novus’, was in the personal possession of German philosopher Walter Benjamin, and he intended to run a journal bearing its name, but never got the chance before his untimely death in 1940.

Benjamin interpreted this painting from a socialist perspective. He saw it as progress (the wind) relentlessly pushing history (the angel) forward. The backwards-facing angel demonstrates the powerlessness of history to resist, and its facial expression is a reaction to the crises, mistakes and contradictions it sees.

Angelusnovus.net is also now the name of a net label begun this summer by three Toronto composers: David Ogborn, Timothy Corlis and myself. David chose the name as a means of paying homage to the “historical” avant-garde and Benjamin as a model figure within it.

On this website, we post MP3 files of our music, which can be downloaded by visitors free of charge. Our intention is to reach as wide an audience as possible - in more places than we could ever visit in a lifetime and whose numbers far exceed the capacity of any concert hall. An unthinkable feat before the advent of the Internet.

As we expect our listeners will first hear our music through their computer speakers, we are writing pieces that will best suit this environment. The genre might loosely be defined as “electronic sound art”. This is not to say, however, that we do not believe in live performance. In fact, the launching of our net label was marked by a concert we put on September 8 of this year at the Gladstone Hotel and half of the pieces featured live instrumental performances. David, for example, had a set of five Street Songs performed, four of which featured solo performer and electronics (sometimes live). All of the songs featured recordings from protest marches. Tim had a piece, …And Yet Their Voices Go Out… which featured trombone.

We view concerts as an important means of getting and staying connected with our audience and ourselves as musicians, not just composers. We have more concerts planned for 2005, including the possibility of one in Milan, where David is temporarily living. The other one or two concerts will likely be in Toronto or the GTA.

We three composers met at the University of Toronto studying composition. David is originally from Winnipeg, Tim from Waterloo and I from Ottawa. We all share the desire to communicate with as large an audience as possible and to create music which stimulates thought about society. We look forward to continually posting new music of ours on our website and to eventually creating web albums. We also look forward to meeting new contributors.

Founded September 8, 2004.
www.angelusnovus.net