The pieces across this portfolio are linked by several themes of reflection, location and geography. Many of the pieces focus upon certain locations or areas and aim to musically reflect the emotional feelings of the memories conjured by these places. 3 pieces explore areas local to my childhood in the Surrey Hills ( Home Woods, Thoughts on Kitlands & Journeys ) whilst White Pins is more global in scope and Cantio Invocatione is a homage to woodland as a whole yet again specifically inspired by locations from my own personal experiences. Given the strong ties between these works and specific locations I have chosen to present the portfolio in this context with images with the hope that it aids in the understanding of the places and images that inspired these works.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot - Little Gidding
Home Woods takes its inspiration from the woodland and common surrounding the Holmwood villages of Surrey where I grew up. Using both recorded and synthesised sounds of rain and birds the piece seeks to blend the real and unreal challenging the listener to perceive the different sounds. The piece is underpinned by a nostalgic drone that aims to add emotive weight to the soundscape highlighting my own emotions towards the locations and sounds. Created in Sheffield the piece in some ways was a creative experiment in generating the sounds of home away from home. The use of footsteps in the opening sections allows the listener to place themselves within the scene and become immersed in the enveloping soundscape. The original programme note for the piece (a quote from Eliot's Little Gidding) can be seen above, this quote was chosen as I felt it accurately summarised the nostalgic content of the piece wherein I explored sounds familiar to me from years of my childhood in the light of electroacoustic and soundscape composition a skill I have learnt since I left those woods.
Cantio Invocatione is a piece intended as an invocation to the woodland in which it is performed. By adding musical content to the natural soundscape of the woodland it is hoped that the soundworld becomes more inspirational with the invocation improving as opposed to interrupting the natural soundscape. Fragments of text in the piece are drawn from Homer's invocation at the opening of The Odyssey "sing to me of the man". The thought behind this is that as a composer I often draw inspiration from woodland and nature (as evidenced by much of this portfolio) and in this way the woodland is my muse. Drawing these links between the classical use of the muse and contemporary composition the piece uses frequent rest and repetition to create the sense of a prayer or incantation with a brief stylistic reference to plainchant to further the idea of prayer. Whilst relatively brief the piece could have extended to be significantly longer repeating and varying ideas in the style of an extended chant or prayer.
Leith Hill View
Project 3
White Pins (Piano Set)
White Pins is a set of seven piano miniatures each a tableau of a specific location and perhaps a moment there. The set takes its title from the American folk supergroup Monsters of Folk's song Map of the World wherein is a described:
There's a map of the world
On the wall in your room
Green pins where ya wanna to go
White pins where ya been
There isn't even ten
Taking inspiration from the above lyrics this set could be seen as a musical representation of my own white pins. Each piece a location that I've visited that holds a significant memory for me. The pieces progress roughly chronologically throughout a day from dawn until summer dusk. As each piece is particularly inspired please find below and image gallery providing a visual stimulus to accompany each piece, most are my own images.
Dawn in Abondance
I ski yearly in the Abondance valley in France in particular in the town of Châtel. The village of Abondance is further down the valley in this particular tableau I can recall gazing out of a car window leaving Châtel early in the morning and watching the the peaks of the high mountains emerging as inky shadows against the sky lighting up behind them. Musically the piece began as an exploration of the two frequent intervals of a tritone and a minor second found throughout the piece.
Miami (5am)
Once on holiday aged 16 in Miami, Florida I was severely jetlagged upon arrival as a result I awoke very early and could not return to sleep. I took the decision to walk to a bakery and buy some breakfast whilst my family slept. The streets were dramatic and empty despite the bright sun as I walked along a wide boulevard observing the few people present at this early hour of the morning. Similarly to the previous piece this work emerged from experiments surrounding the initial motif seen at the opening of the work and the surrounding harmonic possibilities.
Mist on Fulwood Road
The image associated with this piece is a night as I could not find a suitable substitute to my own photo however the piece is in fact inspired by similarly inclement weather in the morning. This piece reflects a hauntingly misty Fulwood Road in Sheffield on a misty morning with people and cars punctuating the fog, reflected musically in the interruption in pedalling. The piece centres on a musical exploration of the use of a single note as opposed to an interval as stimulus.
Anstie Noon
The view from the peak of Anstie Grange near the village of Coldharbour has long held a place in my heart from childhood walks to a place to drive to and relax watching the view when first exploring the freedom of driving. The image accompanying this piece is as the place live in my mind a glorious panorama across The Weald. The piece is the first of two in this set that experiment with the slow disintegration of a harmonic sequence over a period of several repeats.The piece features no barlines to encourage a freedom in performance as well as a lack of accents. The notes do however retain stems to denote the rhythmic relationship between the chords and passing notes.
Olmstead Point
Olmstead Point is the a viewpoint found at the far end of Yosemite valley in California. I visited here as part of a 2 week holiday in Summer 2013. Following the unexpected end of a 5 year relationship prior to the holiday I was in a particularly fragile emotional state yet found great serenity in Olmstead Point perched above a colossal and dramatic valley in the depths of wilderness. The music of this piece attempts to creative a meditative feeling through repetition of 7th and 9ths contrasted with the brief stability of octaves. The high D trill to me represents a bird flying higher than the view pitched against the deep blue sky seen in the image. The piece ends abruptly as the road turns away from the view and descends into the next valley.
Last Run on La Leiche
Similarly to Dawn in Abondance (hence their sharing an image) this piece reflects a moment whilst skiing in Châtel, this time on skis descending the mountain. La Leiche is a moderate blue that leads away from a central descent through trees following the path of a summer road. At a hairpin if one continues off piste you can find a route to a field above the apartment building that we stay in whilst on holiday in Châtel. The piece is inspired by the lonely last descent in the January dusk after the lifts have closed and the light is fading. Musically the alternating hand broken chords represent the turns taken whilst skiing whilst the notes between represent the emotions felt whilst viewing the lights of the town in the distance down the valley.
Ladybower Dusk
Frequently during my years at university, when stressed, I would drive late in the evening to Ladybower Reservoir and sit on a pontoon that juts out into the lake. Often arriving just before sunset and leaving after darkness had fallen I found this location a serene and relaxing place to clear my mind and reflect. The plaintive style of the music reflects that serenity as well as the total freetime allowing interpretation and each performer to find their own serene pace within the music. The piece is the second that works with the gradual deconstruction of a harmonic sequence over repeats, this time more clearly following the use of the pedal to denote phrases. The piece becomes sparse in similar fashion to the view fading across the lake as darkness falls.
Journeys is an audiovisual composition intended to reflect my own driving experiences in my local area. Again the piece is nostalgic reflecting routes that were a feature of my youth and teenage years. The piece makes use of the fantastic resource that is google maps. Using an online tool I plotted frequent routes that I frequently drove on and still drive on today, these centre upon the A24 dual carriageway which despite its' uninspiring appearance provides and a veritable artery of traffic and is unavoidable when leaving my home village of South Holmwood. The selected routes are from Denbies Wine Estate (my place of work until a year ago) to my home. The village of Coldharbour to home, the journey to my primary school and the route between my home and that of an ex-girlfriend. Visually the routes are overlaid and presented in the style of a triptych. The pacing of the videos is variable for dual reasons firstly to remove synchronisation and the encouragement of regular rhythm and secondly to match the musical content. The size of the image slowly grows throughout the video drawing one into the experience of the journeys occurring as well as giving a subtle sense of forward motion as felt in a car. Musically the piece is intended to be reminiscent of early krautrock pioneers such as Tangerine Dream and makes use of analogue synthesis to achieve this in an authentic fashion. The relatively stable harmonic drone base of the piece is evocative of both the drone of an engine and the monotony of driving the same route hundreds if not thousands of times. It is hoped that together the audiovisual piece creates an accurate reflection of the sensation of these journeys as well as providing a window into my own memories and senses as a composer (and driver!).
Project 5
Thoughts on Kitlands
During the year 2011-2012 I took a gap year and played in a band called Finest Minds. We gigged frequently and worked part time allowing two days a week for intense rehearsal. These rehearsals took place at the house of our guitarist in the village of Coldharbour on Leith Hill. His house is deep in the woodland and accessible via a small lane then then a gravel track this remote location as surrounded by woodland was a highly inspirational location convening with perhaps the most musically active period in my life prior to university. The place remains an inspirational location for me and is perhaps the source of some of the strong links to the Surrey woodland in this portfolio. Thoughts on Kitlands is constructed using a mixture of recorded soundscapes at the house itself, particularly of a brook outside, and using source sounds taken from recordings made by the band in particular the track Callous Thoughts which can be heard here. Similarly to Home Woods I sought in this work to blend real and unreal sounds creating a sense of warped reality and presenting a nostalgic and emotive version of the soundworld found at this location. This was achieved using pitch shifting techniques and other filtering of soundscapes which were then recombined with the original recordings to warp the perception of them. All harmonic and pitched material in the piece originates from the recording and stems of Callous Thoughts that were processed and drawn out to create drones as well as the slow paced melodic material.Overall I feel the piece is successful in creating a sense of a warped soundscape combining both the sounds of a location with the sounds created there in the past. Beyond the blurring of sound the piece is also temporally blurred combining recordings from 2011 with present day soundscapes bridging the gap between my musical past and present.
