Output details

The Midnight Court

The Midnight Court continues a number of research themes: the exploration of gaelic literature and culture, the creation of new artistic forms through engagement with extended texts and the embedding of performance characteristics found in traditional musical styles in a contemporary setting. This places the work in the context of a series of works: /Songs of Connacht/ (2008), /Salm an Fhearainn/, /An Seachnadh/ (1987), /Soruidh Slan.../ (1991), /The Woods of Raasay/ (1993), /Seeking Wise Salmon/ (1994), /An Iobairt/ (1996), /An Turus/ (1997), /Àirc an dualchais/ (1998), /Na thàinig anns a churach u/d (1999). The whole original text is not set: the pace of imagined or spoken text is quite different to that of music, and music's tendency to the fixation of a singular interpretation of the sense of any passage affects the concept of the whole, although in the creation of musical formal shapes the multiple resonances of the original text can be translated into rich new ambiguities. The act of editing becomes crucial to the design, preserving the psychological arc and retaining important characteristics of the original text, while managing the passage of time. There are resonances of Gaelic musical styles, e.g. the free heterophony of the Gaelic psalm-singing style and the decorated arches of slow airs and ballads, but the work also embodies performative features of e.g. the Portuguese popular 'fado' and the Sardinian 'ballo' styles: these are integrated into the psychological types of the poem's characters and influence the temporal aspects of the musical form by providing characteristic, identity-laden surfaces through which the thematic and harmonic materials can be interwoven. This 'surface' is further characterised by the use of 'period' Baroque instruments, allowing distinctive and innovative combinations of timbre and instrumental effects, as well as providing a sympathetic textural balance with the vocalists.