Output details

Spectred Light : for Flute, Clarinet & Piano

‘Spectred Light’ is a ghostly light seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. In my composition, this ‘ghostly light’ is explored aurally through a number of compositional devices, drawing upon research I had already begun in my ghost-story opera, ‘Seventy Four Degrees North’. In the opera, ‘ghostly light’ is represented by slow moving harmonic subtones (half-played notes and artificial harmonics in the woodwind and strings) set against fast moving, a-symmetrical rhythmical motives in the percussion section to create opposites in unison. In ‘Spectred Light’ I explore this technique again, but instead of using harmonics and subtones, I create an extremely slow moving horizontal harmony and set this against an incredibly fast-moving and virtuosic rhythmical drive. The result is music that appears to move both quickly and slowly.

The ‘trill’ has always fascinated me as a composer as it not only allows two notes to sound almost at the same time, but also gives a discernable rhythm that can be manipulated speed-wise. Fast trills in extreme registers can, on certain instruments, create overtones and, when combined with other instruments produce a ’ghostly sound’ – music in between music or, more specifically, a third and new sound is created out of two sounds being played together . I use the trill almost to distraction in this piece and, through spectral placing of the pitches, exploit this ‘ghostly sound’.

The fascination with ‘music between music’ became the driving force of this short piece. In fact, the second movement is a slowing down and distillation of a fraction of the first movement’s harmony. Also, quartertones in the woodwind are set against the fixed semi-tones of the piano (notes between tones), and the metal wind-chimes are used as a means of extending the piano’s range into the ghostly stratosphere.