Roads Shining Like River Up Hill After Rain
- Submitting institution
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Brunel University London
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 048-188325-4349
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- April
- Year
- 2017
- URL
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https://doi.org/10.17633/rd.brunel.13359458
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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3 - Music
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- In conducting this research, I wanted to explore a new form for a choral work. The research questions evolved around how a series of fragments by the poet Edward Thomas might be fashioned into a narrative which provides a quasi-dramatic arch, and how a solo ‘cello can be integrated into the fabric of choral music as a) an obligatto line, b) an additional ‘voice-without-words’ an c) as an accompaniment instrument. I had previously set Thomas’s poem ‘Snow’ for choir, where I had found that the images and sense of place in his words evoke strong musical responses.
The research process included consultations with writer Robert Macfarlane exploring possibilities for fragmentary texts. Macfarlane wrote the libretto of the piece and during the first stage of the creative process, I cut the pages of the libretto into small fragments, so I could shuffle them at random. The libretto was formed into five sections each of which returned to one of the verses from Thomas’s poem ‘Roads.’ I set each of the five stanzas from ‘Roads’, with the lines of the poem being passed around between soloists. In order to create space around the poem fragments, I decided to have one instrument only and also to not have the entire choir singing all the time. I chose the cello during the research process because it mostly plays a single line and as such acts an additional voice, a song without words.
The research findings demonstrated that the cello has the ability to provide simultaneously three modes of operation (outlined above) in terms of integrating with a choir. They show how Thomas’s poetry which encompasses an ‘intensity of seeing,’ can be translated into music and thus an intensity of listening. The work premiered in Oxford on 15 April 2017 with solo cellist Gabriella Swallow.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -