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Moment to Moment (2000-2001) |
orchestra – 18'
Some conversations are very memorable. I remember one with a music producer friend in the mid 80s, when he told me that although my music was often ‘beguiling’; even ‘beautiful’, he personally was still unsure of my inner feelings about sound and music.
I suppose he was referring to the fact that a great deal of my music (then and now) was/is inspired by a direct interaction with the natural world. Some 18 years after that conversation, I have wondered if things have changed that much for me! Perhaps.
Although a lot of my recent music (that composed since my return to the UK from Australia in 1995) has continued to address the way in which living things and natural phenomena can ‘suggest’ musical ideas and responses, I’m aware of a good deal more introspection than in earlier works of mine.
I happen to be one of those people who enjoy (sometimes suffering from) dreams! But I am also a person with a long history of what I guess could be called ‘anxiety states’. Those who at any time have suffered from ‘panic attacks’, will know how powerful such experiences can be. Moment to Moment is an orchestral piece that looks inwardly to my own dream-states and senses of anxiety.
Each of the 3 movements is both independent (formally) and yet connected. There is a strong connection between the first movement of this work and the first movement of my Gaia. Gaia is a large-scale work for voices and chamber orchestra and is located within the notion of an evolving natural history of sound. The first movement of Gaia is called ‘towards Big Bang’, and is by virtue of the imagined (half known and understood) ‘moments’ in the state of energy and matter before the cataclysmic birth of our Cosmos.
Sometimes I wonder about (and wander in) notions of deep connections between the human brain and the entire cosmos. This is why the first movement of this orchestral piece is called Fleeting Moments. Such ‘moments’ are often vivid, even vital, yet ephemeral. But the spaces between such moments are also important. For this reason, I have structured Movement 1 in terms of an interplay between sound and silence. Those who can see the movements of the conductor will be able to see how these silences are ordered. In fact, the progression (and extension) of silence is ‘measured’ by Golden Section - that is, a series of silences with progressively elongating and compressing duration from units of 1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and back again to zero. Sound occurs always at these points of zero! But we have all had ‘fleeting moments’ and I hope this first movement will stimulate (and evoke) such moments in the listener.
Movement 2 is called moments of fear and anxiety. Oddly enough, I find this difficult to write about. However, it tries to evince (sonically) the memory of fears and anxiety that I have experience(d)… now and then!
Movement 3 is called moments of reflection. My life and mind seem to ‘fuse’ between and beyond more than just acts of musical composition. I also paint, and I am an obsessive observer of Nature. When I take the time to reflect, all of my senses come into ‘play’. In a way, this of all these three movements is a kind of musical self-portrait. Most of it was composed in the wild places of Dartmoor in Devon. This huge domain carries many memories and half-revealed ‘histories’. It’s a place where I can be at peace (or otherwise) with my inner thoughts and sensations.
But having already written too much for my own comfort, let’s hope the music does its own work!
Edward Cowie, Devon, July 2003.