Chanting the Light of Foresight (imbas forasnai) is a 1987 composition by Terry Riley

Terry Riley

Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...

 written for and commissioned by the Rova Saxophone Quartet

Rova Saxophone Quartet

The Rova Saxophone Quartet is a San Francisco-based saxophone quartet formed in October 1977 at the same time as their "less adventurous" but better known colleagues the World Saxophone Quartet. The name "Rova" is an acronym formed from the last initials of the founding members: Jon Raskin, Larry...

, though during the course of the composition it was decided that Rova would compose "The Chord of War" and "The Pipes of Medb/Medb's Blues" contains improvisation.

The piece is based on the Taín Bó Cuailnge

Táin Bó Cúailnge

is a legendary tale from early Irish literature, often considered an epic, although it is written primarily in prose rather than verse. It tells of a war against Ulster by the Connacht queen Medb and her husband Ailill, who intend to steal the stud bull Donn Cuailnge, opposed only by the teenage...

(The Cattle Raid of Cooley, translated by Thomas Kinsella

Thomas Kinsella

Thomas Kinsella is an Irish poet, translator, editor, and publisher.-Early life and work:Kinsella was born in Lucan, County Dublin. He spent much of his childhood with relatives in rural Ireland. He was educated in the Irish language at the Model School, Inchicore and the O'Connell Christian...

), a part of the eight-century Ulster cycle of heroic tales.

The work is partly in resonant intonation

Just intonation

In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...

, requiring false fingerings, jaw manipulations, and straining the lips and lungs, and contains many unusual time signature

Time signature

The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....

s. "The Tuning Path" and "The Pipes of Medb" progresses from simple to more complex areas of tuning

Musical tuning

In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.-Tuning practice:...

, statically depicting night on the battlefield. "Medb's Blues" is in the form of a 6 bar 10/4 blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 where players alternately keep a cantus firmus

Cantus firmus

In music, a cantus firmus is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition.The plural of this Latin term is , though the corrupt form canti firmi is also attested...

 while others improvise. "Song Announcing Dawn's Combat" depicts foster brothers and main character adversaries Cúchulainn and Ferdia and uses 7/8 rhythms, pulsing drones, and Hindustani scales to refer to the Bhagavad Gita

Bhagavad Gita

The ' , also more simply known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text, and in particular, as an Upanishad in its own right, one of the several books that constitute general Vedic tradition...

. Ferdia is killed by his brother with a secret weapon, gae bolga, which Cúchulainn removes from the body while lamenting in "Ferdia's Death Chant". Cúchulainn completes his training under Scáthach as a warrior and shaman, and she chants to him his future through the imbas forasnai through repeated phrases containing 8/8 and 7/8 measures. Only the first chord of the Rova-composed section does not appear throughout the rest of the piece. Riley responded to Rova's concern for this by saying, "Well — that's the chord of war."

Movements

1. The Tuning Path
2. The Pipes of Medb/Medb's Blues
3. Song Announcing Dawn's Combat
4. The Chord of War
5. Ferdia's Death Chant
6. Chanting the Light of Foresight

The piece has been recorded and released on:

• Chanting the Light of Foresight (1994), performed by Rova. New Albion: NA064CD.