Work list and notes
Solo piano music
Moment, Eternal! (2006; 1 min)
This narrow river was once wide (2005; 9 mins)
Local News (2003; 10 mins)
"Good Night!" (2001; 23 mins)
Music for other solo instruments
Hearts are with us still (flute; 2005; 1 min 20 sec)
Their oldest clothes (viola; 2002; 13 mins)
Larger groups
Do not look down on me (4 voices s.a.t.b; 2003; 4 mins)
Works from 1995 - 2000
As small as dust (solo piano, 2000; 1 min)
Small as dust (5 players; 2000; 3 mins)
John Barleycorn Must (bass clarinet & piano; 1998; 10 mins)
Speciosa facta es (choir: s.aa.t.bb; 1997; 5 mins)
Ciaramella (accordion; 1996; 3 mins)
Chac (six players; 1996, 7 mins)
Akkisukpok (solo piano, 1995; 2 mins)
Alchera (eight players; 1995, 9 mins)
"The Eskimos, or Inuit, of the extreme northern latitudes lump all these phenomena - the northern lights, the dawn's aurora, the glow of sunset - together in the one word akkisukpok."
Nigel Lewis, The Book of Babel (p.69)
Penguin Books Ltd 1994 [ISBN 0-670-83080-1]
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As small as dust
Insects as small as dust are never done
Wi glittering dance and reeling in the sun
As small as dust, like many of the works listed here,
has great resonances with the the poet John Clare's creative ambiguity,
questionable insanity, love of nature, and
sense of intimate union with each tiny, missed, lost or discarded bit of
life in the world. The words used for the title
are taken from June in The Shepherd's Calendar
which was first published in 1827.
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"Good Night!"
The title, but nothing else, is borrowed from Leoš
Janáček's On an Overgrown Path.
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Local News
Although the outward appearance of music - 'style' - changes according to when
and where it was written, I prefer to look beyond these details to the meaning
locked away in their interaction, or composition. I want to find the character:
the basic force articulating meaning through the music which is independent of
time or place, yet which can only be found through knowledge of its time and place.
Not through analytical knowledge or biography but through intuitive understanding.
Local News attempts to apply this approach to itself.
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Moment, Eternal!
This short piece was written specially for Michael Finnissy's 60th birthday concert in April 2006.
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Ciaramella
This short accordion piece is based on a transcription made of a recording
of bagpipe music played by Italian immigrants to America nearly a hundred years
ago. This music, and the people who played it, was a long way from home when the
record was made, and the recording in turn is at an even greater remove as it reaches our ears
so many years later, just as folk music can seem a very distant thing,
only partly understood even though it contains the origins of music itself.
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John Barleycorn must
Must is a word denoting something unavoidable, a duty or obligation.
It also means wine that has not finished its fermentation. An English folk poem
describes the birth, growth, and inevitable death of John Barleycorn who is the spirit of
the grain and ultimately of all living things. Robert Burns wrote a well-known version of this story.
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