Howard Skempton-Tally (For Enlightenment Gallery-British Museum) 2006PSS-ViolinOuttake. Recorded 25-1-10 Engineer/Producer: Jonathan Haskell www.astoundingsounds.co.uk

Project for Howard Skempton ‘Tally’

Paul Pellay-Fjord – Flamm Remembered – Flecks (Live)

Peter Sheppard Skaerved-Morgan Goff-Neil Heyde

(Live)

South London Gallery, London 2010

Camera-Colin Still (Optic Nerve)

Sound- Jonathan Haskell (Astounding Sounds)

Michael Alec Rose-Palimpsest

Palimpsest  was written in 2006 for my first residency at the British Museum. It was inspired by the Gray’s Inn Road Hand-axe. The full title continues ‘on an axe head in the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum’. Again, performance indications proffer poetic insight. ‘With Adamantine evenness’, ‘An axe-edge’s breadth slower’, ‘Il tempo fugge!’

Michael Alec Rose-3 Short Obsessions

British Musem-Gallery 33. 23rd September PSS with Mihailo Trandafilovski (Playing Nigel Clarke, Dafina Zeqiri, Yigit Kolat, Shen Yi, Bartok, Scelsi, Evis Sammoutis, Tartini, Michael Hersch, and Trandafilovski!)

Playing Lars Bagger’s ‘Chorale’. Composers Dmitri Smirnov and Paul Pellay at left. Photo: Richard Bram

 New sounds have always flooded across musical borders by means of trade and travel. The first bowed string instruments were brought to Europe from Asia in the century before the Renaissance. By the late 17^th century, the violin had anchored itself into the musical practises of both secular and religious celebrations and observation, from feasting to prayer.  But it must not be forgotten that the excitement about music is also centred on a particular fascination with the tools that are used to make music, both as historical objects, objects of inspiration, and objects of change. The violin is the ultimate example of this-an extraordinary piece of technology, capable of extraordinary flexibility, and almost limitless potential for ‘up grades’ and alteration. Its function and meaning have been in more or less constant flux for nearly 500 years.  

Georg Phillip Telemann – Fantasies     Telemann B flat at the BM , Telemann E flat at the BM

Laurie Bamon

DmitriSmirnov  – Amore Sola*

Judith Bingham – We Two (The Lost Works of Paganini)     Bingham at the bM

Michael Alec Rose – Palimpsest (the Grays Inn Hand Axe)*       Rose at the BM

Trad. Knud Larsens Halling  (PSS, after Halvorsen, after Knud Dahle)  Knud Larsens Halling

 The Telemann Fantasies are the archetypical 18^th Century domestic piece-music of the highest quality designed to be played at home at the table, as the companion piece to eating and conversation. These will be presented alongside works by living composers responding to the secular environment of the home, dining and providing food.

   Franz Ignaz Biber –  Guardian Angel, companion of Man

Johann Sebastian Bach –  Sonate BWV1001

Lars Bagger – Chorale (and other works)*

Oliver Waespi –  Aureole*

Sadie Harrison – Bhavad Khair Baqi!

Jim Aitchison –   Fugue Refractions-after Laocoon  *

 A group of recent pieces grouped around the last of Franz Ignaz Biber’s Rosary Sonatas.  The baroque ‘sonata’ was explicitly linked to religious observance. Four living composers respond to Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and Ancient Greek themes. These range from the most painstaking consideration of an 18^th century ‘prayer ring’, to music based on a mosque garden outside Kabul.

          Giuseppe Tartini –  Sonata ‘through tempest’s horror’ 

Dafina Zeqiri – Dream

Nigel Clarke – Voices in the Sand (Turfan)

Michael Hersch  –  in the Snowy Margins

Mihailo Trandafilovski  –  Fragments – Light* & In the Hills

Tom Myron –  Merian Etude*

Ian Wilson  –  Cartographies

Shen Yi –  Tajik Dance

The Istrian composer Giuseppe Tartini straddled the east and west. Best known as an Italian composer, he was born in modern day Slovenia; his music never lost the flavour of the Balkan meeting point. Living composers from the Balkans, Xinjiang, UK and US, face up to questions of travel and alienation.  

Philip Glass   –   Strung out

David Gorton   –   Rosetta Caprices*

Jean Hasse   –  Collections Considered*

Paul Pellay     –    Evolving to…*

Paul Archbold   –   Gauge Symmetries

Howard Skempton –  Tally* & Helix

The tally sticks in the Enlightenment gallery are a powerful symbol of our times, dominated by invoices and receipts. Alongside these, composers respond to the original translation programme, the Rosetta stone, to the idea of a modern collection of objects, and to the astounding modern notion of our place in the universe.

Playing Jim Aitchison’s ‘Fugue Refractions’ based on the Laocoon. Composer Oliver Waespi behind. Photo: Richard Bram

Peter Sheppard Skaerved-ViolinLars Bagger-‘Julen har bragt velsignet bud’

St Mary Aldbury Church. Violin PSS. Engineer Jonathan Haskell-Astounding Sounds 6/6/10

section 1section 2section 3There is music that hovers on the edge of creation, at the place where sound, where movement, where words fail. Its beauty often resides in discomfort, in forgetting, in disappearance, in lightness, in fragility, perhaps in not quite being there at all.