Landscapes

From Said Esmeble's concert at the City Halls in Glasgow.

Often it can be impossible to grab hold of solid thoughts, squeeze them into a sentence and deliver them in a way that doesn’t sound crass or thoughtless; sometimes the inexpressible can be the most important, sometimes not saying them can be the most destructive thing we don’t do.

(Appologies for the recording quality, but you get the idea)

Things we can't tell each other

Named after Caspar Frederic’s painting Wanderer above a sea of fog this piece uses the sound of a finger running along the side of a glass as its source material. In the piece I wanted to try to create music which has a physical effect on the listener as well as an emotional one and this almost constant pitch, sometimes at quite extreme volume can at times be quite an uncomfortable listen. However I have tried to balance any pain with a compulsion to listen on as the piece creates a bleak, melancholic emotional world as well.

The Wanderer

From Plug 2011 at RSAMD (now Royal Conseravoire of Scotland). My take on the Leider tradition.

Schlafen, Schlafen

Hopper himself insisted that his paintings were simply factual and had no expressive content and he was reluctant to say more about his work claiming ‘the whole answer is there on the canvas.’ However House by the Railroad (painted in 1925) is, to me at least, a painting of profound expression. The static, lonely house and unrelenting figurative style of the painting create a sense of melancholic loneliness, as if the house were a permanent observer of the world that moves past it. As with many of his paintings Hopper includes the implication of travel, in this case an empty train track but in others an empty road or stationary car. This motive contrasts with the stationary house and reminds us of the transitory nature of place. The un-seen train’s passengers will inevitably move past the building, perhaps glancing at it through the train window as they speed towards their destination.

Thanks to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, PLUG2012 and the 3rd year performers for all their hard work.

House By The Railroad

My intention in writing this piece was to play with allusions to other existing styles within the western classical tradition and to investigate the use of panel forms in a slightly larger work. I wanted a sense in which the music moves between a series of developing secessions, returning to each periodically as they each develop in their own linear direction. Whether or not the piece is successful in this is up to each of us to decided for ourselves.

The piece takes as its source material a small fragment from Sibelius' 7th symphony, which is one  of my favourite pieces in the symphonic repertoire. I found it an interesting liberation to give many of the most important aspects of the piece: the core material and the climactic moment of the piece to another composer and, allowing him to speak on my behalf in some ways allowed me to be far more uninhibited in my own creativity within the work.

In writing this work I was interested in the paradox between the beauty we feel in a landscape panorama, or the profound expression one might find in a Rothko painting; and the reality of unthinking natural processes which have no meaning beyond themselves. In the hard light of day a Rothko really is just paint. Do we find more in these things than is actually there? Is this ability a gift of our humanity or just self-indulgent delusion? These are some of the questions which preoccupied me while writing the work. 


Ochre and Red on Red

The kilogram is the only standard measurement based on an actual artefact, rather than a physical property (many people believe it is equal to 1 litre of water, this is not strictly true.) The international prototype kilogram, this platonic kilogram, is located in Sevres on the outskirts of Paris. From the original, six 'witnesses' were created and these used to develop others which were disseminated around Europe as a way of standardising the measurement. The kilogram as a measurement only  exists in relation to this original object. Every so often the original is measured against its witnesses in order to insure they all remain equal, for obvious reasons. In a bizarre twist, the original is inexplicably losing weight much faster than its witnesses to the point where eventually it will no longer exist, making the kilogram notionally weigh absolutely nothing!
I find this story totally fascinating in its explanation of the process of human efforts to impose order and standardisation upon the world around us and the seeming determination of that world to thwart these efforts. This piece, through its four connected micro-movements, and the relation between its constituent components, in many senses, is separated and organised; quantified and analysed.

Thanks to Cavan Campbell for working so hard to perform this piece so well.

The Sevres Kilogram

Thom had his first public performance; a short work for solo piano called Landscapes, at the International Shrewsbury school of Music summer school, under the guidance of composer Kevin Malone. Since then he has continued his studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (formerly RSAMD) under Dr Oliver Searle, and now in his third year with Stuart MacRae. Thom has had a number of performances at the Conservatoire's PLUG festival  and in addition Thom has had his work regularly performed by Said Ensemble, which Thom co-founded with fellow composers Jason Staddon and Matthew Whiteside. They have been running relaxed late night new music nights in Glasgow since 2011. In his independent work as a composer Thom is particularly excited by collaboration with artists from other disciplines and has worked recently with the poet Rhys Cook (Trinity College of Music), as well a current on going collaboration with artist Cedric Tai (MFa Glasgow School of Art). Additionally Thom has had work performed by Red Note and Music Lab.

Thom Norman