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Inscription is a memorial piece to the great Italian canon composer Aldo Clementi (1925-2011). The canon here is in the string quartet parts, onto which the voices inscribe a text by Pessoa:
All work is futile, and futile is all work.
The futile wind, which surrounds [stirs up] futile leaves,
Represents our effort and our state.
The given and the accomplished, both are given by Fate.
Serene, above yourself, look at
The isolated and infinite possibility
From where the real emerges uselessly.
And stay silent, and only in order to think, feel.
This performance of the first version of the piece was recorded live by Endymion and EXAUDI, conducted by the composer, at the Purcell Room in September 2011.
I Quae est ista
III Ficus protulit
IV Hortus conclusus
SSAATTBB soli
Mala punica is series of eight pieces based on the biblical Song of Songs, focusing on the vegetable and horticultural imagery of the poem. Like many of my recent works this series is focused on ‘elemental’ or fundamental materials and processes, each piece being a canon or group of canons, and built from simple or restricted melodic elements. I was particularly interested in the conjunction of the lushly erotic texts (a temptation but also a potential pitfall for the composer) and the technical rigour demanded by the canonic forms: as if the sensuality of the textual material required the system to bind it. Equally I was concerned that the musical material – the melodic lines which were to be subjected to canonic treatment – should be open and broadly modal, so that the resultant music would exist in a tension between the open, ‘natural’ consonance of each line and the often highly intense dissonances generated by placing them in strict canons. Each piece takes an image from the text as the basis for its structure: for example, the rising plume of smoke in Quae est ista is translated into coils of canonic lines tracing upward spirals; Ficus protulit uses the image of burgeoning nature as the basis for textures of increasingly dense polyphony: flowers waving in a gentle breeze give the oscillating figures of Hortus conclusus. Hortus conclusus, a complex texture comprised of three layered canonic systems, stands at the centre of the cycle as an emblem of the whole: I imagine Mala punica itself as my own ‘enclosed garden’ of eight somewhat exotic plants.
Studio recording by EXAUDI, Orford Church, Suffolk, May 2009.
vn, vc, pno
A celebration of honey, in homage to (and drawing on) Antoni Tapies’ Celebracio de la mel and Schubert’s Liebesbotschaft. I had wanted to use the Tapies painting for a while before I was asked by the Bloomsbury Trio for a new piece. The piece uses various graphic or semi-graphic notations in its three sections, which get progressively more intimate.
Recorded live by Kürbis Ensemble at Bmic’s Cutting Edge, The Warehouse, London, November 2008.
sop
I set this poem by Mary Queen of Scots – written on the death of her first husband in her late teens – for the wonderful soprano Julia Doyle. I am particularly interested things or places that are bare, empty or someway laid open, and these words seemed to invite a very spare treatment.
Recorded live in June 2007.
vn, vla, vc, pno
For the past few years my work has focused on the simplest possible musical elements: single notes, scales, oscillations, canons, repetitions &c. This came about gradually through a desire to clarify and pare down my music, which is one of my strongest impulses; another is to make polyphonies, multiplying these simple seeds into music which is texturally complex and rich. The Lewisham Harmony is the first of a series of ‘South London Harmonies’ written for various different ensembles and instrumental line-ups. This was written for Gwyn Pritchard’s Uroboros Ensemble and performed by them in London and Weimar in Spring 08. The textures are made from bundles of individual lines with only one, two or three pitches and note-lengths each; therefore although the piece is very lively it is also a series of essentially static ‘harmonies’.
The other pieces in the series are The Catford Harmony (fl, ob, cl in Bb, vn, vc, pno), The Peckham Harmony (cl in C, tpt in Bb, trb, vla, cb, pno), The Nunhead Harmony (cl in Bb, vn, vla, cb).
Recorded live by Kürbis Ensemble at Bmic’s Cutting Edge, The Warehouse, London, November 2008.
ob d'am, gtr, 2afl, 2cl in A, vib, ch org
The opening of the first movement, Saenredam, of a triptych of works based on Dutch Realist art of the 17th century. Saenredam was a great painter of church interiors. Here the oboe d’amore and guitar are a concertino, the others form a kind of ripieno. This recording was made at the première by Kürbis Ensemble in February 2007.
Recorded live by Kürbis Ensemble at St Anne and St Agnes, London, February 2007.
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