Orchestra

Strangely Elated

2018 | 17'  

Commissioned by Glenn Gould School New Music Ensemble
for orchestra and electronics

2(I=picc II=afl).2(II=ca).2(II=bcl).2(II=cbsn) - 1.1.1.0 - perc - hp - strings

Score

Perusal Recording available

Strangely Elated is based on the life and work of Canadian experimental filmmaker Arthur Lipsett (1936-1986). Lipsett was a director of short, avant-garde films who used montage and found-footage to create immaculately edited works of incisive, satire: hyperreal portraits of society juxtaposed to reveal the beauty, comedy and depravity of contemporary life. Lipsett led a tragic, too-short life; at the age of ten he witnessed his own mother’s suicide and, suffering from psychological problems of increasing severity, he took his own life at the age of 49.

Lipsett’s films have an agile, almost improvisatory nature to their structure, but were often precisely planned with detailed outlines and sketches. These outlines are in and of themselves works of art and they show the intense level of thematic and structural preplanning which went into Lipsett’s work. Strangely Elated is based on Lipsett's intricate outline for his 1977 film N-Zone. This particular outline references Lipsett’s friend and colleague, the Canadian photographer John Max (1936-2011). Strangely Elated incorporates audio recordings of Max speaking which are drawn from Michel Lamothe’s excellent 2010 documentary film, John Max, A Portrait.

First Screening

2016 | 12'  

Commissioned by Victoria Symphony
for film and orchestra

2(II=picc).2(II=ca).2.2 - 4.2.3.1 - timp - perc (3) - hp - strings

Score

Perusal recording available

bpNichol’s First Screening is a 1984 suite of “computer poems” programmed in Apple BASIC on an Apple IIe computer and originally distributed on 5.25” floppy discs. These computer-programmed poems were a natural extension of Nichol’s concrete poetry in which the typography and shapes created by the arrangement of text on the page were of equal importance to the words themselves. In First Screening, the technology allowed for the addition of movement and duration to the palette of tools available, and the words flicker, dance, shuffle and bounce around the computer screen.

This piece is, in a sense, a setting of the text of these poems not greatly unlike any other orchestral song cycle except in one aspect. This is not a song without words—words are in abundance—but rather a song without voices.

The version of the poem projected in this piece was captured from the original code by the filmmaker Justin Stephenson. Stephenson’s film, The Complete Works, is an insightful exploration of Nichol’s work which is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in Nichol or poetry in general. More information about The Complete Works can be found at thecompleteworks.ca

bpNichol’s work appears courtesy of the Estate of bpNichol and is Copyrighted by Eleanor Nichol.

Under Dark Water

2014 | 20'  

Commissioned by Esprit Orchestra
for soprano, two mezzo-sopranos, alto and orchestra

0.0.2(I&II=bcl).2(II=cbsn) - 0.0.3.1 - perc(3) - harp - pno - strings

Score

Perusal recording available

Under Dark Water sets the text of a short excerpt from Toby Litt’s 2001 novel deadkidsongs. The novel tells the story of four young boys in Cold War-era England as their disillusionment and anger towards adults escalates into the perpetration of horrific acts of violence. The novel begins with each of the four boys having a near-death experience: falling from a tree, being buried alive, being burned in a fire and drowning. The excerpt used in this piece details one of those near-death experiences. 

The title deadkidsongs is a literal translation of Kindertotenlieder, Gustav Mahler’s song cycle for voice and orchestra. In Kindertotenlieder, Mahler sets five poems on the death of children by Friedrich Rückert. Litt prefaces each chapter of deadkidsongs with short excerpts of the original German text from Rückert’s poems alongside increasingly distorted English translations. The chapter from which the text for this piece is drawn begins:

Du must nicht die Nacht in dir Verschänken,
mußt sie ins ew’ge Licht versenken!

Within thyself fold not the Night,
Instead bedrown it in Everlight!

Mahler’s settings of these two lines occupies thirteen bars of the first of the Kindertotenlieder, ‘Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n!’ (Now will the sun as brightly shine). The material of Under Dark Water is drawn almost entirely from those thirteen bars, exploding and extending them over the length of the work. 

The title Under Dark Water is also a reference to the song ‘Over Dark Water’ from the 2012 album Clear Moon by the Anacortes, Washington-based lo-fi band Mount Eerie. In addition to Litt’s text and Mahler’s music, months of obsessive listening to this album have had a clear influence on the piece. 

Dockwood

2013 | 11'

Commissioned by Manchester Camerata
for orchestra

2.2.2.2 - 2.2.0.0 - timp - strings

Score

Dockwood is titled after a 2012 book of the same name by Bristol-based illustrator and printmaker Jon McNaught. McNaught's book is subtitled '2 Autumn Stories' and follows two inhabitants of a small town as they go about their business on a quiet autumn day. A kitchen porter at a nursing home distractedly prepares lunch for the residents. A teenage paperboy goes on his evening paper round before returning home to play video games. The book is an expert presentation of the gentle beauty in the autumnal process of decay and the subtle ironies of the places we look for distraction and solace in the face of unrelenting change. 

Dockwood was written for the Manchester Camerata as part of the Sound and Music 'Embedded' Composer in Residence programme.

Panufnik Variations: Variation 4

2013 | 2' (24')

Commissioned by London Symphony Orchestra
for orchestra

with Colin Matthews, Max De Wardener, Evis Sammoutis, Toby Young, Elizabeth Winters, Larry Goves, Raymond Yiu, Anjula Semmens and Edmund Finnis

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Panufnik Variations was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra and consists of a series of ten variations written by ten different composers on a theme from Sir Andrzej Panufnik's Universal Prayer. Panufnik Variations was first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by François-Xavier Roth at Barbican Hall, London, UK, April 13th, 2013.

Therma

2010 | 4'

Commissioned by London Symphony Orchestra
for orchestra

3.3(III=ca).3(III=bcl).3(III=cbsn) - 4.3.3.1 - timp - perc(2) - harp - pno - strings

Score

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Therma is an orchestral re-imagining of an early unperformed work of mine, List 1; the since and again. List 1; the since and again was a fourteen-minute work for eleven solo strings written for a composition competition which took place in Rome and Thessaloniki in 2005. Compressing this much longer work into a 4-minute orchestral piece became a process of distillation. I removed all non-essential material until all that remained was a stark, skeletal outline which barely resembled the original work. But Therma is a re-imagining rather than an orchestration of my earlier work. It also incorporates my somewhat hazy memories of travelling to Rome and especially Thessaloniki where we stayed in a thoroughly bizarre hotel on a mountain overlooking the city. Giant chandeliers, a cocktail pianist in a bar with no patrons, and an empty swimming pool all contributed to it seeming like a cross between The Shining and the hastily abandoned set of 70s-era James Bond film. Therma (Θέρμα) was the original name of Thessaloniki when it was founded in 7th century BC . Built on a mosquito-infested swamp it was named for the Greek word for malarial fever. 

Brothers

2010 | 4'

Commissioned by Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
for orchestra

3(III=picc).3.3(III=bcl).3(III=cbsn) - 4.3.3.1 - perc(2) - harp - strings

Score

Perusal recording available

Aerial Courser

2009 | 6'

Commissioned by BBC Symphony Orchestra
for orchestra

3(III=picc).3.3(III=bcl).3(III=cbsn) - 4.3.3.1 - perc(3) - harp - strings

Score

From 1896 to 1897, starting in California and gradually spreading out across America, there were a wave of sightings of “Mystery Airships”. Though occurring long before ideas of extraterrestrials and flying saucers had entered the public consciousness, these reports of dirigible-like flying machines seem to be a cultural antecedent of the wave of UFO and alien abduction stories which erupted in the 1950s. The crews of these airships—universally reported to be human—were variously described as descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, a nude couple who had travelled from Mars, and a man holding many women hostage at gunpoint. The airships were attested to have a variety of fantastical capabilities; one report in the Albion Weekly News suggested that the pilot was able to shrink the airship and fit it in his pocket for storage. The following headline was printed in the San Francisco Call, 18 November 1896:

“CLAIM THEY SAW A FLYING AIRSHIP / Strange Tale of Sacramento Men Not Addicted to Prevarication / Viewed an Aerial Courser as It Passed Over the City at Night / Declare They Heard Voices of Those Aboard Joined in Merry Chorus”

Aerial Courser was written for a Sound and Music workshop with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jurjen Hempel.

The Llano Curve

2007 | 10'

Commissioned by Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra
for orchestra

3(I=afl.II=bfl.III=picc).3(III=ca). 3(II=bcl.III=bcl).3 – 4.3.3.1 – perc(3) - timp – hp – cel – strings min. 14.12.10.8.6

Score

The Llano Curve was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra and first conducted by Susanna Mälkki.

The Pearblossom Highway is a stretch of California State Route 138, made famous by a series of photo collages by the artist David Hockney. It stretches 29 miles through the towns of Vincent, Palmdale, Littlerock, Pearblossom and Llano, where it takes a slow gradual turn known as the “Llano Curve”. This work's connection to this small corner of the Mojave desert comes not from the Hockney collages, but rather a series of photographs by the San Francisco based photographer Troy Paiva. Paiva specializes in night photography, using extremely long exposures - up to eight minutes - to capture the available light of the moon, stars or passing traffic and bathe his subjects in an otherworldly glow. His subject matter is almost always the modern ghost towns of California: abandoned houses, cars, shops, service stations and factories left to be swallowed up by the shifting sands of the desert with the faint glow of Los Angeles still visible on the horizon.

While the subject matter of these photographs was the main source of inspiration for The Llano Curve, the techniques and characteristics of night photography also provided a jumping off point for many of the techniques used in the work. One of the most interesting aspects of long exposure night photography is the behaviour of stars in a clear sky. If the exposures are long enough, the position of the stars will have changed while the shutter was open, drawing an arc of light through the photo. This expression of passing time in a static image was a key source of inspiration for this work, and the piece opens with an exploration of these ideas.