Output details

A gentle infinity

a composition for symphony orchestra

This was a commission for a 6-minute piece from the London Symphony Orchestra and was performed by them in the Barbican Hall in November 2010. The piece evolves its form from a permutating chord cycle, as a metaphor for ocean wave cycles, that forms a continuous, spectrally fluctuating, canvas of overlapping phases. All the various chordal and melodic layers are generated from the central series of seven microtonal chords. In respect of both its deployment of cyclic processes and its concern with wave imagery the piece synthesises principle themes of the composer’s musical output of the last decade. The work also explores infinity as a ‘quality’, a notion which was the subject of the composer’s dialogue with the mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, who introduced her to the idea of ‘different kinds of infinity’ in the context of their shared exploration of Borges’ Library of Babel in 2008. The piano work ‘The History of Rock’ (also submitted) is related in its qualitative concern with infinity. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra recorded the work in November 2013 and the score and recording will be accessible online at SOUNZ from late 2013.