I
The Dark Mirror
II Eden
III Through Spawn and Spore
IV Man
V The Mirror Cracked
I was aware of damage to the environment
during my early studies as a scientist,
but I am not sure when general abuse turned
into major threat. Neither am I sure when
for me it became an emotive issue, and in
some strange way it now connects to the
very ’being’ of civilisation.
For this reason I wanted to take a somewhat
detached, external view, one which considers
human action over a longer time span. The
purpose was to hold a sense of perspective
without lessening the seriousness of what
is happening. This is also reflected in
the title, implying that the world has a
personality, one which does not like what
is being done to it.
During
my planning of the work, and indeed during
the writing, I was aware also of how much
it was confronting my general beliefs, reviving
the somewhat menopausal thoughts of ‘why
are we here?’ Thus the first movement,
which had a working title of Creation, tries
to establish different emotions at the same
time, appearing from nothing other than
the wind. The feel is both edgy and ethereal
(the minor second being the most important
interval), it becoming most powerful at
the words ‘that would nail God’s
palm to Time’. The second movement,
Eden, is light in character, more reminiscent
of a dripping rain forest than that of Adam
and Eve. ’Englishness’ is more
akin to the central portion of the movement
where an allusion to Vaughan Williams’s
Lark Ascending is made.
The
third movement, built around the age of
the dinosaur, not surprisingly is heavy
and ponderous, but with a majesty that reflects
the grandness of the inhabitants. As huge
and powerful as they were, their environmental
impact was minor compared with that of man.
The entrance of this being to the piece,
in the fourth movement, is via two instruments
that represent early civilisations –
the didgeridoo and the conga. The choir
has been given primitive sounds, gradually
building up the vowels of our alphabet.
On from here the tension builds for the
first time, the phrases ‘men and markets’,
‘more mouths, more land’, and
‘turn up the heat’, among others,
providing the driving force.
The
‘effect’ has been held for the
fifth and final movement. The crushed semitone
appears again as a chord that opens the
movement, the ice is creaking under off-beat
motifs within the strings. This section
culminates with the important words ‘the
signs of change’, the music reappearing
later with the equally-significant ‘or
that the ice is wearing thin’. The
unaccompanied soloists make quasi-biblical
reference and the choir follows with ‘and
so the prophecies have come to pass’,
marked ‘hymn-like’ in the score.
It was tempting to close the work with the
warmth of this passage but this seemed a
luxury inappropriate to the subject matter
and my feelings. Wherever one’s beliefs
lie, nothing is forever. Thus the opening
music and words of Silence, Darkness, Emptiness,
draw the piece to its close, ending where
it began, with the wind.
Michael
Stimpson
