Output details

Fallen

Fallen was composed in the winter of 2009-10 for SATB chorus with two soprano soloists who emerge to flank the choir stereophonically. The texts are drawn from the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi (‘We have fallen into a place where everything is music’) and an ancient Persian proverb (‘Drops that gather one by one finally become an ocean’) which alternate through the piece. Although a simple and relatively short work, this piece occupies a significant position in my output because through it I was able to clarify a number of technical and musical issues which had stifled my work in recent years. Firstly there is an acceptance of the role that a semi-functional tonality can play (alongside modality) in my work, as a means of referencing a past and/or creating an illusion of memory. Secondly in Fallen I was able to develop the notion of drawing upon my own earlier work to a level where the repetition virtually becomes a structural principle; listening to music always challenges the memory since performance takes place in time and - like a three-dimensional sculpture - a piece of music can never be experienced complete within any single moment. The listener will, consciously or otherwise, be engaged in remembering what has taken place either earlier in the music or in previous performances of that work. Fallen draws upon the ‘chorale’ element of Frozen (Memory of Place) and in my recent work this notion of self-referencing has been used extensively both to stimulate memory and provide an alternative perspective. Thirdly, in Fallen I was able to accomplish a simplicity of means that I had previously not achieved. Composition is for me a process of clarification, the articulation of the idea in its most precise form without superficial adornment.