Instrumentation
1.afl.1.ca.2.2 - 2.2.2.0 - perc (1 – vib/t.bells/large tam-t) – harp – pno (requires steel drum mallet) – strings (11.13.10.8.3) - pre-recorded sounds (requires 1 operator)
Availability
Score and parts in preparation
Programme Notes
‘Acre’, from æcer, an “open field”, a measurement of land deemed tillable in one day. Here it alludes in part to the turning over, the tillage, of a musical line – an upward reaching melodic fragment. ‘Ringing, still’ can be taken in its double sense, as both ‘encircling, without moving’ and ‘sounding, even now’.
Looking upon an open field (or any space), I like to contemplate the three dimensions of time contained within it: traces of the past, glimpses of the future, the slow turn of the present.
In this piece, three layers of music form a sonorous braid. They correspond in my imagination to ‘past’ (filtered recordings of piano chords), ‘present’ (a gradual passage of non-tempered sonorities performed by the consort and pre-recorded sounds) and ‘future’ (aqueous and luminous melodic lines, like a slow-motion breeze, or an image just beyond grasp).
L.I