For orchestra
Year of composition: 2007/2009
Work Introduction
I had a strange image in mind as I started work on this piece. It was of a microscopic orchestra all seated in the swirl of a fingerprint. I was thinking about the point of contact between a bowed open string and a violinist's finger and an entire orchestral sound was seeping out from beneath it.
I wanted to show how it felt to make a sound -- something tactile and sensual.
Physical durations -- the length of a full up bow or down bow, an inhalation or exhalation, tracing a finger across a drum skin - would determine the lengths of phrases. All the tiny details in the overall sound would come from the simplest of sources -- stopping a note on a string.
For this reason the violins, violas and cellos have some strings detuned, allowing them to play only open strings and natural harmonics in the beginning.
In a way, the shape of the whole piece is actually the detailed plotting of a journey from the simplicity of a touched harmonic to the seductive, sophisticated tone of a 'stopped' note.
David Fennessy
