Something's Wrong With The Teletubbies

Programme Note:

Based on two opposing subject matters, the Light Messenger is a poetic description of the meaning to communicate through the sky. The first of which is based on the Sanskrit poem ‘The Cloud Messenger’ by Kalidasa. The poem tells the story of a poet who has long been separated from his wife and who prevails upon a passing cloud to carry a message of love to her. The other concerns Hawking radiation, where hypothetical particles are formed by a black holes boundary. This radiation implies black holes have temperatures that are inversely proportional to their mass; the smaller the black hole, the hotter it will glow. This glowing light felt like our final message in the universe - similar to the cloud in ‘The Cloud Messenger’. The concerto goes on a journey in which the poetic lyrical message of the cloud distorts and breaks down into subsequent light particles.

This version of the piece is a microcosm of a larger piece in which both Fenella and I hope to collaborate on in the future. 

Performing here is Fenella Humphrey’s with the Royal Academy Symphony Orchestra and Aaron Holloway-Nahum in a workshop of the piece.

The Light Messenger - Performed Live by Fenella Humphreys, Aaron Holloway-Nahum & RAM SO

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, 7 June 2016, CBSO Centre

Hwyl fawr ffrindiau

I - 'Night resonance recedes' [00:00]
II - 'Miracle, bird or golden handiwork' [04:49]
III - 'That gong-tormented sea' [10:51]

The titles of the three linked tableaux that make up this piece come from the first, third and fifth stanzas respectively of W. B. Yeats' late poem Byzantium, which is rich in evocative and arcane imagery. While this provided the catalyst for the piece, the titles should not be taken as programmatic in a narrative or literal sense. Rather, in the symbolic spirit of Yeats, the music is a manifestation of the same concerns underlying the poem: a journey through a dark world of startling contrasts, visions of ecstasy and a deep yearning for permanence and transcendence.

The piece was commissioned by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and first performed by the orchestra conducted by Grant Llewellyn on 23/11/12 at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff

Byzantium

THE unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

W. B. Yeats (1930)

Byzantium (2012)

Joseph Davies is a Cardiff-born composer and collaborative artist based in London. Hailed as “one of the brightest of rising stars” (Bernard Clarke, RTÉ), his music is often characterised by extremes of frenetic activity and serene contemplation which seek to reflect and transcend the wild contradictions of 21st century life. A love of obsessive rhythmic patterning akin to American minimalism and electronic dance music is wedded to an extroverted flair for instrumental colour, resulting in "extraordinarily vivid and exuberant" music of "overwhelming power" where boundaries between the spiritual and the carnal dissolve.

His works, performed and broadcast throughout Europe and the USA, range from virtuosic chamber-size pieces for some of the most gifted musicians of his generation to large-scale pieces for ensembles including several for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, most recently his violin concerto Parallax (2021) premiered by Daniel Pioro in 2022. Other commissions include Intricate Images (2014) for harpist Catrin Finch and cellist Steffan Morris, the orchestral song cycle The Shortest Day (2016) setting specially written texts by former Archbishop of Canterbury and poet Rowan Williams to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, and Hymn to Hermes (2018) for The Hermes Experiment.

As an arranger, conductor and recording artist he has a knack for bringing out the best in his collaborators, with projects including Meilyr Jones’s prize-winning album 2013 (2016, Moshi Moshi) and Baxter Dury’s Prince of Tears (2017, Heavenly Recordings), both regarded as those artists’ finest work to date. In 2017 Joseph’s wind orchestra piece Anemoi was nominated for a BASCA British Composer Award and he was awarded the Sir Geraint Evans Prize by the Welsh Music Guild. Other projects include work for CHROMA Ensemble, EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble and the Esbjerg Ensemble, with performances at the Royal Festival Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Musikhuset Aarhus, National Concert Hall (Dublin) and elsewhere.

Joseph has been a lecturer in composition at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama since 2013 where he has taught over a hundred composers to date. From 2019-23 he was the lead composer for Tŷ Cerdd’s CoDI Text scheme, mentoring six composers alongside Irish writer Kaite O’Reilly. His work is published by Birdsong Music, with some works published by Chester Music.

Byzantium (2012)

Joseph Davies

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