Through the Digital Door: Solstice 2024
For this issue of Through the Digital Door, we celebrate
Beautiful, beautiful summer!
Odorous, exquisite June!
(June in Maine, Hannah Augusta Moore)
With the longest day just past, we have chosen four sun and solstice-related works to help keep the concept of sunshine alive, even if we’re not seeing very much of it at the moment!
This work for flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano and string quartet was commissioned and written in 2009-2010 under the ‘Per Cent for Art’ scheme for the Solstice Arts Centre, Co. Meath.
The introductory note to the score describes how the name of the centre captured what Hope loved most about Meath's essence:
Using the title as a significant aspect of the form of the music, the piece evolves from a simple genesis and along the way evokes change and possibility as it irrevocably marched towards it climax, reminiscent of the suns rise on those fateful days of solstice, with which our county and ancestors are so irrefutably intertwined.
In this excerpt, the work is performed by Brona Cahill (violin), Feilimidh Nunan (violin), Beth McNinch (viola), Grainne Hope (cello), Rebecca Halliday (clarinet), Ian Forbes (bassoon), Anne Macken (flute), Tristan Russcher (piano), conducted by Fergus Sheil, on 21 June 2010 at the Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Co. Meath, Ireland.
Eilbhlis Farrell - O Star Illuminated by the Sun (1999)
Written for soprano, percussion, violin, and harp, this work celebrates the 25th anniversary of ‘Adapt’, the Women’s Refuge Centre, Limerick. The text that is sung is an adaptation from a Hildegard of Ursula antiphon, ‘Favus Distillans’, ‘Of things I would rather keep silent I must sing’ by Comtessa de Dia, and an early Marian prayer from Byzantine liturgy.
The latter gives the work its title: ‘O Star illuminated by the Sun, O land which flows with milk and honey, the rock that gives forth water, the fire that guides in darkness…’
In the catalogue information for this work, it is noted that this is a work…
…celebrating women and evokes a varied spectrum of emotions remaining essentially simple and transparent in its musical structure. The dramatic aspects reflect the early Chamber Cantata structure, a concentrated form closely related to the scene.
The following excerpt is taken from a recording made on September 18th, 2005, in the John Field Room at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, where the work is performed by Sylvia O'Brien (soprano), Alan Smale (violin), and Denise Kelly (harp).
Find the score and sample pages here on our website.
Ann Cleare - the square of yellow light that is your window (2013-14)
The immersive sound world created in this next piece was written between 2013 and 2014 for alto saxophone, electric guitar, percussion and piano. In her evocative written piece on the work’s genesis, Cleare depicts two creatures - a dragonfly, and ‘a multi-armed, deep-sea being, which lives in an aphotic zone of the ocean, where very little light infiltrates.’
Relating these to the creation of the work, Cleare write that
structures similar to these are present in this piece, that a trio of piano, percussion, and electric guitar form a self-contained, blinded, impermeable, sonic biosphere. And the saxophone, in extreme contrast, is a giant retina with thousands of light-sensitive cells, like the dragonfly.
The following performance is by Ensemble Nikel.
Ian Wilson - Sonnenwende (2009)
Our last work for this month is Sonnenwende by Ian Wilson. Literally meaning ‘the turn of the sun’ - in other words, ‘solstice’ - this work, composed in 2009, captures the intense vitality of the sun at this time of year.
The following clip features pianist Michael McHale and is taken from the RTÉ lyric fm recording made in St. Peters Church of Ireland, Drogheda, Co. Louth, in 2012.
You can find the score on our website here. If this has put you in the mood for more solar-related music-making, consider joining Crash Ensemble’s premiere of Ian’s new work, When I Became the Sun at the Hugh Lane Gallery this Sunday (June 30th).