On Memory

Memory works in myriad ways - an event of years ago, seemingly forgotten, is provoked by something in the present to return, in the imagination, with full force and keenness; another may be slowly, hazily groped towards; still another may comes as part of a chain of associations, rising up when given room to do so. A number of the 12 pieces that make up On Memory take past works or fragments as starting points, and the way they appear (and disappear), the way they are more, or less, recognisable, play out such ideas about memory. For example, a Couperin keyboard piece slowly emerges in number 2, as the music rises from blurred depths to crystalline heights. In number 3, a pulsing, troubled tango is interrupted by lyrical fragments and later gives way to quotations from a Klezmer dance (Jewish tango existed in Eastern Europe). In number 4, a Bach sarabande is played mostly backwards, but every now and again a beat or bar is heard the right way round, a moment of recognition. Number 8 is a brief contemplation of a phrase by Schumann; while in number 9, against a rocking background, brief moments of Ravel, Henry Mancini and Janácek appear and disappear. Number 11 is devoted entirely to an elision of Chopin's Berceuse and Bill Evans' Peace Piece.

This last may be experimental in nature: none of the notes are mine. But none of these pieces are intended as game-playing. If the mixture of materials may be labelled postmodern, my intention is to create a meaningful, expressively charged postmodernism. Indeed, part of the mix of materials is modernist too: the opening movement, in its concentration on decaying sounds, nods towards Feldman; number 5 involves a long hard look at a single piece of material, gradually encrusted with decoration; the gestures of number 10 are a homage to my teacher Franco Donatoni (if the starting material is Fauré’s Après un rêve). Finally, numbers 6 and 7 occupy a category of their own: all white-note, they employ tonal material but organised through the prism of post-serial thinking.

On Memory was composed in 2003-4, thanks to an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant. It was written for Andrew Zolinsky, and the first performance was given by him at The Warehouse, London, as part of the Cutting Edge series in November 2004. The work was subsequently issued on NMC Records (NMC D144).