May 2003

This performance is part of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Martin Musical Scholarship Competition. Come to the concert and vote! Read on for the programme note for this piece:

What is it that we are looking at?

for piano quartet

“What is it we are looking at?” is a question from an essay by Bridget Riley in which she details her fascination and admiration for George Seurat, one of the most important neo-impressionist painters. The issue, she points out, is one of perception and identification. Is it Seurat’s aim to represent something to us, or is he experimenting very carefully with the juxtaposition of dots of colour in order to conjure an image in our mind’s eye, getting it to mix the paints? What, if anything, do these dots show us about the world as Seurat sees it, something real or something unfathomable?

This familiar philosophical conundrum of appearance/reality is of course relevant to music-as-sound and musical notation as representations of those sounds. Certain composers have been concerned that musical notation should make the performer ask “what is the music behind these dots?”, “what is it that we are looking at?”; Beethoven, Janácek, Chopin and Satie immediately come to mind. This aspect of musical notation, which links at a basic level music and painting with all forms of representation, is one that also concerns me and the score is written with it in mind.

The second link to Seurat is a more literal one in that the piece contains, quite intentionally, textures which might be described as pointillistic. Sounding the same pitch with different timbres, important in these textures in particular, is also intended as an analogy of different ‘coloured dots’ producing a combined effect when mixed.

Furthermore, the piece explores shades of timbral and harmonic colour, for example, in the piano writing, in which the pedal often ‘mixes’ sequences of single notes or clusters to create harmonies more complex than the notation might suggest. The last section is a ‘mobile’ form in which the performers play strictly in time but without regard for one another; it is probably the sparsest, yet stillest, part of the piece.

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