Sally Burgess | The Smith Quartet |
Daryl Runswick's accidental counterpoints (1998) is a cycle of five songs for female voice and string quartet with texts by the composer: four loosely-constructed sonnets and a villanelle. The melodic and harmonic components of the music are entirely derived from cells consisting of the first three notes of the minor scale (doh, ray, mi-flat) arranged into various modes and gamuts. Musical forms are relatively simple, dictated by the shapes of the poems; however some melodic matrices, canonic, process and scafra devices are used where appropriate. The score is written in a mixture of conventional and aleatoric notations. accidental counterpoints was commissioned by and is dedicated to Catherine Pierard.
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[ 1 ] over breakfast he said
'making love to you –
because, no matter what
as if the act of love
as if, no matter what
[ 2 ]
in Limassol Zoo a dozen big cats laze, yawn and bicker
on London Bridge myriad commuters jostle and swarm
but in crystal waters a thousand dazzling fish
here onstage a string quartet
wings pulsing in an ice-blue sky, a cloud of starlings wheels
[ 3 ]
what's real? this – choose anything – this – is it real?
what's real? the lost Leonardo
life
passes by like a parade
what's real? I believe this so it's real – really?
is this real? is this real for you? is this really real?
[ 4 ]
I have this memory of childhood:
what happens when you pull a wing off?
dark smell of stained wood and
hundreds of daddy-longlegs
one-winged flight, is it possible? [ 5 ]
we jerk and prance, dangling on wires from a frame
bored with a love that stays too
safe or too long the same
the fabric of our love, loose-wove, soft, warm, became
damage done without a glance, no prick of shame
or, balking at the danger, old love reclain
from conquest to conquest the sad procession, game after game
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Listen [ 1 ]
[ 2 ]
[ 3 ]
[ 4 ]
[ 5 ]
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Recorded at Blackheath Concert Halls, London, December 2006.
Engineer Kit Venables. Produced by Daryl Runswick.
All these texs, compositions and recordings are covered by
copyright.