Creatures of Ezekiel (2007)_
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. . . The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, but each of them had four faces and four wings . . .1
The fantastic and baffling vision of probably the Bible's most enigmatic prophet, Ezekiel, tells of strange creatures appearing in a cloud (i.e. the stage) surrounded in brilliant light. Each creature has a wheel near its base intersecting another wheel, with eyes all around the rims. When the creatures move, the wheels don't turn, but rather "follow" their host; when the creatures rise, the wheels also rise, thus following the creatures wherever they go.
As a tone poem, Creatures of Ezekiel has great prophetic potential, but this is not Salecich's intent in this work. Rather, the swirling and fantastic images of brilliant light, immense clouds and the awesome atrocity of the four creatures becomes important focal points. Instruments are treated as sections or groups of super-swirling cluster-chords, constantly highlighted by "supernatural" elements—effectively incomprehensible noise or effects.
Just as the great YAHWEH of the Old Testament, the surround-sound swirlings also represent the omnipresence of the great "I AM". All-encompassing, the creatures eventually overwhelm the composition, becoming an impassable and immovable object within the work.