This piece is an exploration of sound as individual waves and and modelling a piece of music on a light display rather than playing a piece from start to finish. ‘Spectra’ is an installation for two speakers placed five metres apart. I use 10 different sine tones and 6 different recordings of various instruments, each as individual ‘light tones’ which are switched on and off at various times and are manipulated to create different sound images. Imagining music as a visual image rather than a linear progression.
(It sounds better if you listen with headphones)

2018

Spectra

This piece is composed for flute, clarinet and double bass. It aims to explore the unique textural qualities of each instrument, including the use of multiphonics on both the clarinet and the flute.

2017

Faint

Aérien is a piece which explores the qualities of the flute and the line that is drawn where the air blown through the flute becomes sound.

2018

Aérien

This piece is based on a poem called ‘Gifts of Rain’ by Seamus Heaney. Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet. The topic of many of his poems, including this one, is the Irish landscape. He uses vidid imagery and long sentences running over many lines to describe nature with an underlying sense of unrest. I tried to convey this in the piece. It is for solo soprano, violin, viola, cello and double bass.

2019

Gifts Of Rain

This piece is based on a section of the poem 'Funeral Rites' by Seamus Heaney. I try and reflect the unsettling feeling of a funeral presented in the poem. The same lines and melodies are echoed through out the choir and on the clarinet creating a haunting feeling. The piece then builds to a brief sense of happier emotions which then fades again. This piece was performed by Ad Lib Choir in 2019.

Funeral Rites

This piece is written for flute, oboe, two horns and four hand piano. “Objects and Space” explores the concepts of sound and silence. In the piece I attempt to represent “objects” as blocks of sound and use silence to represent the “space” between these sound objects. The first and final section have very obvious sound objects with all the instruments playing in unison and clear moments of silence. In the middle section, the lines are blurred, and the silence is not as distinct. In this section, the silence exists in the individual voices, but they are no longer in unison. This allows for different combinations of sound and silence to be explored.

Rosa Clifford

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