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Nymphaeas (2007)
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for harp quartet
During the last 30 years of his life, Claude Monet devoted most of his time to painting subjects from his gardens at Giverny in France . Most especially, he worked on a massive series of paintings - more than 40 in total, and all on a very large scale - of his water-lily-ponds. By this later stage in his life, Monet had evolved very special techniques for the execution of his paintings. These can be summarised as follows:
The preparation of the canvass and the application of large areas of colour in different regions of the canvass, sometimes in the form of ‘harmonies’ of colours and sometimes deliberately laying ‘grounds’ of stridently clashing colours. These were to form the basis for the reflective light on the ultimate surface of the painting, and they were always careful studies of the way light penetrates water of different depths and different degrees of transparency, thus affecting the intensity and range of the colours visible on a ‘surface’.
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Then he began to sketch-in whole areas, where plants such as overhanging willows and thrusting spikes of irises were reflected on the surface of the water, interspersed with ‘rafts’ of lily-pads. In all cases, the brush-work looks fast and vigorous, but the choice of ‘rhythms’ and colours were always a very lengthy process, sometimes taking years of alteration and altercation.
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Finally, Monet made detailed markings of individual flowers and leaves, sometimes suggesting the golden and red stripes of fish beneath the surface and sometimes filtered through mirror-reflections of overhanging vegetation or the drift of clouds in the sky.
It is these three phases of technique in painting (by Monet) that have formed the structural basis of this harp quartet. I am a painter myself and have long been interested in the interplay between the ‘seen’ and the ‘heard’; between the drawn and the written. Looking into the completed work, I sense that in keeping close to the techniques of the visual artist, I have made a piece that is a sonic-translation of those mercurial and magical paintings.
In any event, the choice of four harps seemed inevitable! With such a combination of instruments, I can evoke the fusion(s) of colour and line, and by means of many layers of sound and motif, the linear and rhythmic dances of light and colour that have made these paintings so famous and so captivating!
Edward Cowie
Maurens, Dordogne, France.
2007
Performance Note:
The four harps should be in a semi-circle. However, harps 1 and 2 should sit on the left of the audience, with a small gap between them and harps 3 and 4 on the right. The movements should be played with only a short break between movements 1 and 2, but with a longer one between movements 2 and 3. The best acoustic for the piece would be a resonant one!