Output details

'Ellsworth 2' for orchestra

With Ellsworth 2 I have been very strict with myself, having been commissioned (by Thierry Fischer and the Utah Symphony for their 2012-13 Masterworks season) to write a work of only fifteen minutes in length.

Ellsworth 2 takes as its model the painting 'Painting for a white wall' from 1952 by Ellsworth Kelly (b 1923). Kelly experiments with the power of pure colour. In this particular work he transforms colour into the actual subject matter. I often draw upon visual art for inspiration, and have long admired Kelly for his rigour, attention to detail and clarity of thinking.

Providing context for Ellsworth 2 is an earlier homage to Kelly: ‘Ellsworth’, the third movement of Troubled Light, written in 2008, see output 1.

Much of the material in Ellsworth 2 stems from the earlier Kelly homage. I’ve deliberately drawn upon the slow, central, meditative section from ‘Ellsworth’. It’s the re-appearance of that material, albeit hugely loud and abrasive, in the final movement ‘Mehr Licht’ of Troubled Light that I took as a starting point for Ellsworth 2.

The painting by Kelly is in five distinct sections, all exactly the same size; both in width and height. Each one is a separate, clearly defined colour. It is precisely this kind of clarity that I have tried to aim for in my piece. It is very much a purely abstract orchestral piece, five distinct sections of orchestral colour which each last exactly three minutes, or should do. They're all distant cousins of each other, material-wise, running without a break.

Ellsworth 2 was premiered on 26 April 2013.