What’s the story behind the name of this piece?

In this new piece I was consciously returning to the sound world – and I suppose you could say the psychological world – of much of the music I’d composed during the 1970s, when I was intuitively groping my way towards a language of my own. In order to do that, I’d had to abandon – at least temporarily – almost everything I’d been taught about writing music and start to depend on my own direct perceptions instead of just fitting in with the language I’d inherited. It was a pretty radical step, and I turned intuitively to the natural world to look for some kind of illumination – perhaps revelation – and I found it in the rhythms of my own environment. I was lucky enough, at the time, to be living on the edge of a national park which was always buzzing and humming with the raw materials of music – cicada drones, birdsong, frog rhythms and so on. This freshening up of my awareness of sound, which permanently change the shape of my music, accounts for the Epiphanies in the title. But since it’s not possible to live permanently in arcadia, I added Elegies when a note of sadness and intensity started to intrude, reflecting the events – personal and political – of the so-called real world. The ending’s peaceful enough – it’s sort of ‘back to the womb’, with healing water sounds.

What kinds of influences have you drawn on to create the musical language, or sound, used in Elegies and Epiphanies?

As well as the shapes and patterns of the natural world, I also drew on some material from my own earlier work – mainly passing allusions – but in some cases, where the material had persisted over the years and become symbolic, or iconic – at least, to me – I quoted it and placed it in new contexts. So you could say that the piece is partly influenced by an earlier version of me which I’ve re-visited and updated, and which reflects the way I’ve changed – matured, perhaps – over the passing years. Another important influence is the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism, which recognizes and accepts that the events, the things, of the world are in a constant state of flux, and that efforts to intervene in this process are ultimately futile. It’s an essentially quietist concept which is concerned more about maintaining balance than trying to force change, and it’s characteristic of many eastern art forms, which tend to be contemplative rather than ideological, and static rather than narrative.

Looking at the instrumentation, there appears to be a large percussion section including some rather unusual instruments, notably the Burmese gong and a Small South East Asian Frog. Can you tell us your reasons for using these, and in fact what they are?

The WASO has a wonderful percussion section led by Tim White  which, of course, I wanted to exploit – in this piece more for its ability to play with great sensitivity than produce virtuosic barrages of sound – so, although there are plenty of instruments, they’re often used quite sparingly. But they’re always an essential ingredient in the texture: sometimes they stand alone – sometimes they combine with other instruments to influence their colour or mask their attacks. As usual I use a lot of tuned instruments like the vibraphone, various bells and tuned gongs. Some of these are from the South East Asian region, like the Burmese gongs you mention. The Frog is just that: it’s a hollow wooden shell in the shape of a frog – and its back is striated, so that when you scrape it rapidly across it back and forth with a wooden stick it produces a wonderful frog-like sound. I can’t resist it.

The score contains suggestions for lighting, most of which seem designed to create an atmosphere of mystery. You also use recorded and electronic effects.

Do you want to tell us about your reasons behind using them, and what the audience can expect?

I developed a thing about lighting in the early 1980s. A lot of the music I produced back then was very contemplative and inward looking, and where possible, I asked for lighting to be substantially reduced to create an appropriate atmosphere in the concert hall so that people might be encouraged to focus on the details of the music.

At first, conductors and orchestra managers were a bit suspicious – and occasionally grumpy – but eventually it was accepted that this was one of my quirks and it was here to stay – so they started to go along with it. I never ask for anything too technically difficult, although there are, occasionally, some tricky cues when I go for a sudden dramatic changes – as in my concerto Bird Spirit Dreaming, for example, the oboe version of which was performed by the WASO a few years ago. The WASO has also performed my shakuhachi and orchestra concerto, The Heart of Night, which is theatrically lit – and there’ve been several others over the years.

More recently I’ve begun to include recorded effects. In Elegies and Epiphanies there are sounds of flowing water, which I intend to be healing and cleansing, especially after moments of intensity – and there are also some spooky moments. And finally, the light drains away and we’re engulfed by waves of the sea – the Great Mother, the Great Womb.

But I’m giving away too much – it’s definitely not a piece that depends heavily on effects. What I hope is that people will get lost in it and enjoy an experience of timeless calm and it’ll be interesting to see how it fares placed between those two fabulous WHAM! pieces – Ishi’s  Monoprism and Ravel’s Bolero. Apart from anything else, this concert’s a very imaginative experiment in programming!

 

25 October 2010