Blair Boyd on inspirations from visual art and the impetus for Undercurrent

​As my work often deals with connecting with physical movement, the topic of my previous Illuminate blog discusses how my early experiences with dance naturally feed into the way I approach and think about music.   For this second blog, I discuss visual art as an inspiration for my new Illuminate commission, which builds on an earlier piece for flute and harp entitled Shift.
 
Shift was written to accompany an installation of the same name by artist Anne Gibbs which was featured in National Museum Cardiff’s ‘Fragile?’ contemporary ceramics exhibition in 2015.  Gibbs’ work incorporates intricate small-scale figures that explore themes of beauty and unrest, approached with sensitivity and precision. Each figure could be viewed as an independent piece, but what I find striking is Gibbs’ deliberate arrangement of these distinct figures to form the collection as a whole. Specifically, two aspects of Gibbs’ piece have inspired the processes encompassed in its musical companion: its title and combination of disparate materials.    

Anne Gibbs, Shift 2015, Bone china and mixed media components Photography: Chris Stock

Close-up of Anne Gibbs’ delicate figures

The title of Gibbs’ piece was instantly intriguing to me in particular, and in a way, it served as an instruction for the composition of the piece.  A five-note cell of pitches that is perpetually shifted rhythmically into reoccurring musical figures largely comprises the piece. This set of pitches was isolated from the painstakingly intuitively composed opening flute gesture.  
 
The second principal source of inspiration taken from Gibbs’ ceramic piece, crafted out of bone china, silk thread, pins and wire, is combining disparate materials. There is a parallel between the visual installation composed of differing materials and the grouping of contrasting instruments in the musical work. Shift combines the agile chromaticism of the flute and the timbral possibilities made available by the differing lengths of the harp’s strings to correspond with the mixed materials in Gibb’s installation.  
 
More info about Gibbs’ work can be found on her website: https://annegibbs.co.uk/
      
Undercurrent, my piece commissioned by Illuminate Season I 2019, develops ideas from Shift within a longer piece, both motivic and constructional, particularly the concept of the arrangement of disparate elements together. Throughout the piece, timbre functions alongside differing approaches to metre and pulse to coordinate or stratify the instrumental characters.   
 
The largely atmospheric opening of Undercurrent comprises of dovetailed expressive lines in the violin and cello underpinned by muddled chords in the piano’s lower register.  This section corresponds to the organic ceramic shapes in Gibbs’ installation, which I associate with breath and resonance.  A strong pulse is evaded in this section with metre constantly changing to support the expressive lines.  
 
In the faster central section of the piece, however, the dense piano chords evolve into secco rhythmic pulsations which provide a mechanical-like current in opposition to the expressive gestures characteristic of the violin and cello pair.  Four primary cells are combined in different ways to construct the piano part in the central section.  At times these cells are repeated in a familiar pattern, however, the pattern is quickly interrupted and never stated exactly.
 
The final section of Undercurrent is a return to the atmospheric opening as the original piano chords return, this time in all of the instruments. Repeating at a differing rate, the rhythmic pattern is slowly augmented in each instrument until the individual streams converge to close the piece.  
 
You can hear Undercurrent performed throughout 2019 by Boston-based piano trio Prism, alongside new works by Kerensa Briggs, Laura Shipsey, Angela Elizabeth Slater, and Sarah Westwood, as well as historical works by Morfydd Owen, Grazyna Bacewicz and Lili Boulanger.