Description

Blue Forest

This is based on a series of photos I took on my phone when my wife and I visited my brother and his wife in the north of Scotland, and we went to a remote cabin in the woods. The work is in four sections, based on these pictures. ‘Blue Trees’ is the forest late at night, backlit by an amazing blue moonlight in the darkness. The branches sway gently. ‘In A Clearing’ suddenly becomes more industrial, there is choppy, workman-like music, and a wide area of just stumps and brush is left. In the woods wound a wide stream which led to a tarn near the cabin, the tarn actually being an outflow from a much bigger loch behind. Also in the woods was a wigwam made from old pine branches piled up together, and ‘River and Tarn’ certainly has a native American influence in the music, which then suddenly returns to a bleak and native Scottish feel after reaching the water behind the trees. ‘Forest’ is simply the name for the final uplifted burst of the initially-distorted opening theme, and we end peacefully, in the dark blue light.

Musically the piece is crammed full of 7ths, mostly minor ones; and a single chord, in different formations, features and links some of the sections.