Name: Vervet Pls by atsigman
Duration: 1 min 51 s
Description: A collection of shoegaze/modular/ambient tracks.

A collection of shoegaze/modular/ambient tracks.

Vervet Pls

10万

フロー(2017) world premiere: Spectrum NYC, 12 November 2017
Charlotte Mundy, voice
Jordan Dodson, guitar

フロー Live recording

In 1975, I discovered, in an anthology of mediaeval philosophy, two very interesting, interrelated texts. The first of these was an extract from Boethius’ commentary on Porphyry’s "Isagoge", itself a gloss on a fragment of Aristotle’s Categories, while the second, from Peter Abelard’s "Logica ingredientibus", took the exegetical process a stage further.  These two increasingly detailed commentaries on an original text seemed to me to illustrate perfectly the survival from ancient times to the Renaissance of a specific philosophical tradition.  I was fascinated by the impression they created of, on the one hand, an enviable and unassailable continuity, and, on the other, of increasing sterility and authoritarianism (not to mention futility, as the Aristotle text may not, in any case, be genuine).  Furthermore, the texts suggested to me the possibility of a musical counterpart, in the shape of simultaneous layers of commentary on a basic 'text', which I conceived as a pre-existing piece of music, most likely Renaissance vocal polyphony.  It seemed obvious that the piece should be for large string orchestra. Interestingly, the scoring I eventually chose was influenced by that of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, rather than by either of the two well-known pieces for string orchestra by earlier British composers, Vaughan William’s "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" and Tippet’s "Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli".     

I had initially wanted to base the piece on Easter Responsories by the early Baroque composer Marco da Gagliano. However, unsatisfied by the preliminary sketches I made using this material, I considered various alternatives, eventually selecting William Byrd’s motet "Emendemus in melius" (1575). I was influenced in my choice by the fact that Tudor church music was the great love of my then partner, the late Deborah Roberts, to whom the piece is dedicated . I was also attracted by the motet’s exhortatory text (“Let us change for the better”) and by its simple yet suggestive structure: it is in twelve sections, each of which moves seamlessly from homophony to polyphony.  The first four return to homophony, but from the fifth section onwards polyphony begins to predominate, until the four final sections are overwhelmingly polyphonic.  The local movement within sections and the overall tendency towards polyphony seemed to contain implications for the two levels of commentary I had decided upon.  Similarly, Byrd’s division of the twelve sections into three groups of four suggested a large-scale form of three major sections (all of which, I decided, would end with a coda, each longer and more fully scored than the one before).

Having decided on the Byrd motet, I began work on the piece towards the end of 1981, while studying with Brian Ferneyhough at the Musikhochschule, Freiburg-im-Breisgau. I finished it in January 1984. 

In 1982, I visited the ancient Roman city of Heraculaneum, near Naples and was struck by the way that the three clearly defined layers created by the Roman city, the older part of the town of Ercolano on top of a cliff high above and the modern city further back, seemed both a parallel to and a justification of my conception.

"Music for 25 Solo Strings"  was first performed  on 20th February 1986 at St. Johns, Smith Square, London by the London Chamber Symphony, conducted by Odaline de la Martinez.

A more comprehensive exploration of "Music for 25 Solo Strings" can be found in my book "Fragile Continuities" (Vision Edition, 2022).

Vervet Pls

atsigman

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