Music archive entry

The piece began life as a 5-minute piece for a workshop with a chamber orchestra, the Forum London Chamber Symphony. The first draft contained two contrasting ideas, but there was not the space to develop each properly. Therefore I wrote out the first idea in full, and later turned the second idea into a movement to follow it.

However, the piece had clearly not reached a conclusion, so I wrote a third movement. On completing this, I realised that I had not reached the end, and could not leave unanswered questions hanging in the air in such a way. I was therefore forced to write another movement which reached a conclusion, and so in the process found that the opening material had demanded that it be followed through to form a four movement piece with a symphonic argument.

The first movement begins with an outburst, and 'aftershocks' from that outburst ocurr later in the movement. The remainder of the movement consists of moving away from the opening outburst, but not recovering from it. The second movement is systematic and melodic, giving a sense of rebuilding and recovery, but is unable to reach a conclusion other than describing this process of reconstruction.

The third movement is ceaselessly active, progressing through three contrasting harmonies, exploring similar material in each, before ending in naive pentatonic harmony, and fading out without any definite conclusion. The last movement consists of a series of outbursts, each shorter than the previous one, and each followed by a slow reflective section, with each slow section longer than the previous. It ends with the memory of the outburst, but as a memory rather than a present reality.