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Absinthe (piano solo), Awayday Music, 2013

Absinthe explores the perennial question of the possibilities of musical mimesis of well-known visual images. In the painting ‘L’Absinthe’ by Edgar Degas, the total lack of communication between the man and the woman looking away from each other was the starting point for a piano work exploring the sonic issues of thematic disruption and formal disintegration as a response to the painting’s depiction of unresolved disjunction. Reference to late romantic and impressionist piano music from the era of Degas hangs over the piece, for example in the periodic return to an underlying extended dominant chord on F sharp that provides the harmonic base. The absinthe-drinking woman is ‘represented’ by dense chords built up on chains of thirds, and neo-Romantic swaying rhythms that frequently break down in descending clusters (bar 44), whilst the coffee-drinking man is ’depicted’ in bursts of rapid triple forte monodic demisemiquavers (bar 19). These two sound worlds remain diametrically opposed – the increasingly desperate attempts of the more fragile piano gestures are cut short by the brutality of the disjunct staccato writing. From bar 181, the work loses all sense of direction through an increased repetition of small melodic cells, and a dividing line between increasingly over-complex and static harmony is blurred; single notes as units are replaced by larger, more diffuse ‘sound groups’, anticipated by the earlier cluster writing. The work comes to a premature halt with a ‘fade out’ from bar 201, although the ‘ghost’ of the F sharp dominant chord prevails to the close.

Written for Graham Scott. Première: RNCM, February 17 2010; Subsequent performances: Néstor Bayona (piano), Darlington Arts Centre, 9 November; Purcell Room, January 10 2011; Graham Scott (piano): Chetham’s School, Manchester, August 20 2011; Assemblies Festival, Kharkov, Ukraine, October 2 2011. Recording: Graham Scott, 2011. Prima Facie PFCD008.