Performed by Angeliki Giannopoulou on 27th April 2022, as part of the Plug 5: Keyboard concert at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

PROGRAMME NOTE
Ingénue began as a piece about beauty,  and the way in which beautiful things decay. I'm often drawn in by the prospect of reconcilling opposing themes, and the opposition between beauty and decay is certainly one fit for artistic plunder, but so too does it contain a remarkable unity. So many beautiful things seem to resist the prospect of decaying through their beauty itself - we are often too struck by a beautiful work of art, for example, to even consider that one day it may fade and crumble - yet so much of the promise of decay finds itself present amongst beauty. It's often in the imperfections, like the subtly faded hues of an old photograph, or the wrinkles on the face of a loved one, that we're able to find true beauty.

Accordingly, Ingénue exists always as music in decay (it feels presumptuous for me, the composer, to label it beautiful - perhaps only in an arch-modernist fashion); the musical lines are torn and compressed, the strict internal logic of the piece disrupted by an ever-increasing magnitude, towards a final collapse seemingly prophesied in the first few moments. Yet within that collapse, a tender silence is found, where echoes of what once was sing forth into the emptiness, the last reminder of everything we have just experienced.

The ingénue seemed a fitting namesake, and I considered the myriad ways she might fit into the present dialectic; the traditional view might be that her innocence is in danger of being corrupted by the latent sexuality often present (yet unacknowledged) within the archetype. Yet another perspective presented itself, that to craft this artificial purity of femininity, a living, thinking person must first be displaced - the beauty of internal life, and the decay of being reduced to a hollow parody of yourself.

Ingénue

Electroacoustic/noise improvisation using Koma Electronik Field Kit and Field Kit FX, spring reverb tank, marbles, bowl, fork, and screwdrivers. Gets very loud!

Improvisation 10/12/22

Floodmeadow (marrow, spiranthes)
Chamber ensemble
2023-24

Recorded live at PLUG 7: Calum Huggan & RCS MusicLab
Stevenson Hall, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
2nd March 2024

Flute/piccolo - Tjasa Pauko
Baritone saxophone - Aidan Fowler
Horn - Kate Szumowski
Percussion - Calum Huggan
Violin - Masha Zhuravlova
Double Bass - Callum Cronin

Conductor - Kentaro Machida

Floodmeadow (marrow, spiranthes)

Tephra
Solo cello with live processing
2024

Recorded live at PLUG 2: Sonic Nights
Ledger Recital Room, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
29th April, 2024

Cello - Joanna Stark

Tephra

For euphonium, tuba and live electronics

Performed by Dopey Monkey and Riley E. F. Mackenzie at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on 02/05/2025

Drips like love

Riley Erin Flora Mackenzie (b. 2002, South London) is a Glasgow, UK-based composer and experimental musician that creates music to melt your body to; music that is both beautiful and disgusting, that exists between states, and that sits so close that you don't know where you end and it begins.

(she/her)

Riley E. F. Mackenzie

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