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This is the fourth of the series of pieces diffracted terrains in which I explore symmetry and asymmetry in the structural, timbral and spatial dimensions. The first was composed in 2005 for bass clarinet and double bass followed by 'dt:remix' for bass clarinet and live electronics and 'diffraced terrains:quintet'. My uncharacteristic choice here to present discrete movements instead of a single span reflects the exploratory ground that such an asymmetrical and as yet 'unheard' pairing as horn and violin without piano represents. The presence of the piano, in movements iii and iv, as a passively resonating body is one of the several ways in which I attempt to draw resonance from this timbral combination, while it symbolically restores the 'balance' of the 'horn trio'.
back to listrecording: LNT126
The imagined terrain is a prismatic membrane - perhaps water - against which the instrumental timbres play and resonate. Two separate, slowly evolving, strands (defined by the instrumental groupings of strings and woodwind) eventually merge and become intertwined via a network of reflections (both 'straight' and 'distorted') then 're-diffracted'. While I was composing the piece I discovered Jorge Luis Borges' short fiction 'Fauna of Mirrors', an extraordinary play of notions of symmetry and multiple dimensions, that evokes a mythical time when 'the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other.' In the way it creates an imaginary world around these ideas the Borges text reinforced the conceptual framework I was developing for the music (there is no narrative or literal relationship between text and piece).
back to listfirst performance:Transversalities Conference Reading University September 2005
back to listbass clarinet and double bass
for Andrew Sparling and Corrado Canonici
duration: 6'
first performance: Mayfest, Hertfordshire University 17 May 2005
recording: LNT126
Bass fused with bass at the start, they become - as the title suggests – spread apart, both in relation to each other and in terms of their own registral and timbral dimensionality. While the two instruments overlap considerably in range, the character of this piece is drawn from the incongruities in their relative 'weight' of tone - and relative timbral stability - in different registers, at the same time as it exploits the meeting points between them.
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piccolo/alto flute, A clarinet, bass clarinet, horn, trombone, percussion (2 players), harp, violin, viola, cello, double bass
Having no 'meaning' in itself, the syllable 'and' is weightless and transient, yet it holds enormous power to link ideas and create anticipation/momentum.
[...and...11] plays with distance, spatial motion and resonance. Like 'solo for cello' (1993) and 'The Structure of Memory' (1997), the work pursues a form in which contrasting musical ideas are presented initially in quick succession then elaborated through an organic, cumulative process defined by golden section proportions. [...and...11] develops this structure by adopting the morphology of the ocean wave for the ordering and shaping of the material, in terms of character and dynamic envelope, emphasising the cycles of accumulation and decay, and as a vehicle for spatial motion around and across the performance space.
As with [...and...1] (composed subsequently) the spaces delineated in the piece move between extreme distance and extreme proximity recalling the sea (waves travel massive distances across the ocean before breaking on the beach). Each individual musical image/phrase captures a phase of this motion.
A return visit to New Zealand following a seven-year absence (in 2002) stimulated a powerful association between sea and memory that is infused through this piece. In particular, it exposed a new awareness of the architecture of the sea in relation to the body: the extreme distances of the Pacific Ocean as it is approached from the sky contrasted with the tactile proximity of breaking surf experienced from in the water. The title [...and...1] is shared by the earlier work [...and...11] for 12 players. The link between them is the way the wave acts as a shaping force within each piece, encapsulated as a sonic envelope of aspirate – resonant – explosive, along with the extremes of space that are characterised in the music by sharp contrasts in dynamic, register and motion.
[...and...1] is broadly structured over a cycle of seven 'intensity waves', drawing on the theory – popular with surfers - about cycles of ocean waves, that they peak with every 7th or 8th. It was composed in close collaboration with Andrew Sparling whose recently-acquired Howarth A clarinet enabled him to produce the particularly finely-controlled pianissimo that became a feature of the piece, and whose skill in using quarter-tone fingerings made it possible to experiment with these to produce music which exploits their timbral qualities. It is intended that the work be performed in a resonant acoustic such as a church or art gallery. Early on in its evolution a recording, and the space (St Mary's Church, Weston) in which it was made, presented an opportunity to create a new version of the piece that takes advantage of different spaces in the building to extend the spatial dimension of the composition.As well as resulting in a version that was edited together as a layering of three different spaces the experience had a lasting impact on the piece as it is performed by a solo player in live space. The resulting symmetries and slippage between actual and virtual gave rise to the notions underlying the works composed since 2005, including 'diffracted terrains' and the 'Performance in Transit' project. The work is heard here in its pure form without any layering.
Like the sequence of works bearing the title 'diffracted terrains', these pieces share no specific musical material, only a poetic idea linked to particular notions of time, space and form.
back to listbflat clarinet, violin, cello
This trio was stimulated by a book of dream symbols, in the form of simple gouache paintings, originating in the Rajasthan Gujarat area of Western India in the early 19th century. The book is one of any number of dream lexicons to be found in ancient eastern cultures that were used to guide the interpretation of dreams using mythological and cultural symbols pertaining to fortune and destiny. A selection of images from the lexicon were displayed as an exhibition of individual prints by the Kapil Jariwala Gallery in 1998, including 'water mountain', from which the work takes its title.
Although the dream lexicon informs aspects of the various characters of the piece through the suggestion of imagery it is not intended that the music function as an illustration of the visual images themselves. Rather, whereas the pictures seek to make concrete the ephemeral matter of the dream, the music embodies an attempt to restore the subjective nature of the dreamscape and to reconstruct the grammar of its articulation in time: concentrated, disjunct and fleeting. This occurs perhaps in the way that one might attempt to reconstruct a paragraph in an archaic language from its written symbols, without having access to their original source or context, guided only by intuition based on experience of one's own language - in this case the 'language' of the dream.
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stage work for mezzo, SATB
soloists, unseen narrator and chamber orchestra
texts:
Lucretius, James Ker, composer (40')
(10')
first performance: ACL Festival, Taipei September 1997
November 1995
Emanating from the opening G trill, around which the piece unfurls, 'solo for cello' adopts the notion of the spiral. The spiral simultaneously represents an organic process and an architecture of formal proportions, whose power can be harnessed through time to generate continuity, in this case an ineluctable momentum, from a fragile, fragmented beginning. First composed in 1993, then slightly revised in 1995, 'solo for cello' is the earliest work on this disc and was the first major work of the composer after she immigrated to the UK in 1992. It is a highly generative piece in terms of its experimentation with musical form and as a precursor to subsequent works. In 2002 mathematician Marcus du Sautoy selected it as one of his choices on Private Passions on BBC Radio Three.
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