“Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.” Albert Camus from La Peste.

This work was commissioned with funds from Arts Council Northern Ireland as part of its Artist's Emergency Fund in June 2020 during the Covid 19 crisis. It was written in response to the pandemic and draws on the Camus novel 'la peste' which I happened to be reading at the time and which also happened to be about an epidemic.

Seul sous la grande indifference du ciel.

Inspired by a beautiful line from the classic novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - a book full to the brim with poetry.

Pulled down out of the young breath-giving air

Performer - Craig Ogden

This homage to the great 20th Century composer, Toru Takemitsu, exchanges the motor rhythms and relentlessness of some of my earlier works for guitar with a sense of space, an unhurriedness (not so commonly associated with our modern lives), a flexibility and fluidity of line and an approach to colour and texture that reflects my greatest admiration for the Japanese master. 

Takemitsu wrote a significant number of works for the guitar and presumably found, in its comparatively quiet speaking voice, an instrument entirely suited to the expression of his musical sensibilities. His works are amongst the best in the guitar repertoire and all composers for the instrument do well to use them as models on which to build their own voice. 

This piece of music won First Prize First Prize Concorso Counterpoint, Italy 2012.

© Greg Caffrey 2012

First Construction in Nylon

Takemitsu's Dream

Performer: Craig Ogden

Inspired by the landscape of the townland of Corrog on the Ards peninsula.

Corrog

Performers: Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble

Garden of Earthly Delights was inspired by the eponymous painting by the enigmatic Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch, whose works are still the subject of much discussion and debate in the art world. This musical work, in very broad terms only, aims to represent the triptych form of the painting through its three continuous movements. The movements progress from a serenely beautiful and static opening soundscape, through an agitated central section and culminate in a more uncomfortable sonority in the final movement.

Garden Of Earthly Delights - Caffrey

Tre Correnti (Belfast 2013) for Solo Alto Flute performed by Aisling Agnew.

This piece was written for a premiere performance in Italy, hence the title, which translates as “Three Streams”. The range of the alto flute is divided here into three regions (each assigned its own staff), between which the melodic materials weave or leap. Each region, imposing its own mode, impacts upon the melodic and harmonic materials exposed. The alto flute here is not confined to its natural sonorous range, but soars into the domain of the concert flute, plummets to its lowest voice and explores everything in between.

© Greg Caffrey 2015

Tre Correnti

The first of 5 new Bagatelles for solo guitar.

Bagatelle No 1 For Guitar

Environments I Piano & Orch (e

The title takes its name from a line in WB Yeats' most famous poem the Isle of Innisfree. "And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,"
It is a poem that describes an ideal, bucolic scene in the author's mind's eye, however, the penultimate line of the poem betrays the fact that Yeats is describing the scene from the perspective of standing "..on the roadway, or on the pavements grey" and it therefore becomes apparent that he is recalling the peace and beauty of Innisfree from the perspective of the relative chaos of the city - in this case London, where Yeats' inspiration came from looking at a display in a shop window. 

My work for fl, bs cl, vln, vcl & pno is not intended as a representation or depiction of the poem, but merely follows a trajectory from busy sometimes aggressive material towards an ending in relative tranquility.

For Peace Comes Dropping Slow (Chamber Version)

For peace come dropping slow -  2018

The title is taken from a line in WB Yeats' most famous poem the Isle of Innisfree. "And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,"
It is a poem that describes an ideal, bucolic scene in the author's mind's eye, however, the penultimate line of the poem betrays the fact that Yeats is describing the scene from the perspective of standing "..on the roadway, or on the pavements grey" and it therefore becomes apparent that he is recalling the peace and beauty of Innisfree from the perspective of the relative chaos of the city - in this case London, where Yeats' inspiration came from looking at a display in a shop window. 

This version of the work for orchestra is not intended as a representation or depiction of the poem, but merely follows a trajectory from busy sometimes aggressive material towards an ending in relative tranquility.

© Greg Caffrey 2018

The lake Isle of Innishfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

WB Yeats

A Terrible Beauty. Mov. III (...for peace comes dropping slow)

IThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold (2018) 

is a line taken from Yeats’ apocalyptic poem The second coming. This turbulent poem and the music that it inspires provides the eruptive central movement of the larger work, A terrible Beauty's, arch shape form.

The Second Coming  

Turning and turning in the widening gyre    
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
 The best lack all conviction, while the worst    
Are full of passionate intensity.
   
Surely some revelation is at hand; 
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi 
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert    
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.    
The darkness drops again; but now I know    
That twenty centuries of stony sleep 
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,    
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?   

WB Yeats

A Terrible Beauty. Mov II (Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold)

These are the clouds about the fallen sun (Paris 2013)

This piece of music, written as an elegy, is a reflection of a very personal interpretation of the Yeats poem. So, rather than the accepted reading of the poem as a requiem for the demise of traditional values in the face of modernity, I have expressed here a more orthodox sense of loss. Technically the piece reflects my present preoccupation with the creation of more spacious sound-worlds, which, I feel, is in turn consistent with the mood I originally envisaged on setting out to compose this piece.

"These are the clouds about the fallen sun,  
The majesty that shuts his burning eye;  
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,  
Til that be tumbled that was lifted high  
And discord follow upon unison,  
And all things at one common level lie.  
And therefore, friend, if your great race were run 
And these things came, so much the more thereby 
Have you made greatness your companion,  
Although it be for children that you sigh:  
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,  
The majesty that shuts his burning eye."     

W.B Yeats

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