Output details

These Lands, This Wall

Written for performance at the site, /These Lands, This Wall/ reflects the history of Tantallon Castle and its surrounding landscape. The usual sequence, of devising the text, then visual narratives before the music, was inverted. Rather than beginning with text, but with the agreed conceit that in the performance the Castle would be personified by the narrator and 'speak' to the audience, a musical formal shape was proposed, proportioning and balancing the elements of spoken and sung texts and instrumental passages. When the stylistic, textual and temporal flow of the earlier episodes became fixed, more precise decisions could be taken about the ensuing narrative flow and its consequences for the overall formal shape. As the texts of the episodes were created, they could be edited and fitted in to the musical 'numbers'. Through reiteration of the process, the pacing and proportioning of events was finely tuned, so that by the audio editing stage, no significant editing of the literary or musical texts was necessary.

The ensemble was created around elements derived from the experience of works such as 'A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1992/99) and 'El Pueblo' (1989); three trios of: clarinettists doubling on Bass-clarinets, female voices, low strings, with the addition of violin, percussion and narrator. This provides the necessary textural homogeneity from a small number of instruments, but also allows the dramatic deployment of a wide range of timbres and gestural styles. In keeping with the historical aspect of the commission, the stylistic range of the music was based on various lowland Scots and gaelic elements, although a range of creative anachronisms were embedded in the flow of events.

The research aspects of the composition are evidenced by this portfolio of material:

a) Score

b) Audio CD