• cl/pf/vn
  • 8 min

Programme Note

Commissioned by the Park Lane Group Young Artists New Year Series and premiered by Ensemble Mattisse at the Purcell Room on 8th January 2015.

On honeymoon in Tuscany I was determined to come home inspired by a great work of art on which to base my next commission. However, it was watching the gradually changing shape of a cloud crossing the sky over a glass of Tuscan Red that eventually inspired this work: the idea influences the harmonic progressions in the piece which gradually metamorphose in shape, following no particular rules.

Back home I started reading Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything about Climate Change and Capitalism. A chapter about 'Solar Radiation Management', a potentially hazardous proposed geoengineering practice in which sulfates are sprayed into the stratosphere (with the intention of reflecting sunlight back into space) influenced the piece as it progressed (in particular the final movement).

The second and fourth movements are both canons - the first a three part canon, the second a four part, palindromic one (palindromes also feature in the final movement).

© Cheryl Frances-Hoad, 2014

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