A Robin in the Snow
LISTEN to the piece | VIEW the evocative transcription video | Download the SCORE
This piece features the colour red, which has always been associated in my mind with the top string of the violin. The red breast of the robin of course gives another strongly red colouration. The piece tells a little story of how hearing a robin singing in a snowbound environment transformed my own listening. It goes through three different states:
- The first section reproduces an internalised melody as heard while walking during lockdown and in the whiteness of snow. The music here is an example of hearing details: in this case a tiny piece of piano figuration from 'Erstarrung' from Schubert's 'Winterreise' is slowed down. In a performance this moment would fly past almost unnoticed, but here it seeds the generation of an entirely new melody.
- The second section transcribes actual robin calls, which I analysed using a spectrogram. The silences between calls reflect the outdoor environment.
- The final section uses the robin's redness and the transformative power of listening to the calls, as the basis for a more free-flowing melody. Now the full redness of the E-string may be heard.
Compositional Process
This was the first piece to be written. I knew I did not want to include actual robin sounds, because so much of the music is taking place inside my head. So the violin imitates the robin in the central section, then portrays my inner mind during the first and last sections. To emphasize this, I require a mute during the outer sections and different reverberations (internalised and outdoors) to give character to the sound.
The SCORE contains a narrative description of the piece, which is designed to help the player understand the storytelling and convey an atmosphere. It is not essential for the audience to follow this, but it is my intention to include it in the evocative transcription.