Name: Bells Across the Meadows (excerpt) by Ian Gardiner
Duration: 3 min 12 s
Description: The opening of the piece: the left hand exactly mirrors the right hand. From the album of piano pieces, 'Line Drawings', played by Andrew Zolinsky. www.iangardinermusic.com/linedrawings

written for a film about nuclear war in 1983

Music For Film

recorded by Regular Music 1985. In Wagner's Siegfried, Brunnhilde is awoken by Siegfried after a long sleep.  She is overwhelmed by joy and love for him but also feels an immense sense of power over the gods, even in the face of death.  This piece is both a celebration of that love and power, and homage to the sublime quality of Wagner's harmonic language.  All the harmony in the opening and closing sections is derived from the opening bards of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll.  In the original the harmony changes virtually every beat.  Here it is stretched out over several minutes, underpinned by driving rhythmic patterns and squeezed for every last drop of propulsive energy.  The vocal part in the middle section is an edited version of Brunnhilde's worlds on awakening.

Idyllic Rhythms

The opening of the piece: the left hand exactly mirrors the right hand. From the album of piano pieces, 'Line Drawings', played by Andrew Zolinsky. www.iangardinermusic.com/linedrawings

Line Drawings album

Bells Across the Meadows (excerpt)

composer
arranger
orchestrator
emeritus professor of composition, goldsmiths
percussionist (lapsed)

Bells Across the Meadows (excerpt)

Ian Gardiner

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