w19512
| Title | Persistent Illusion, A |
| Contributors |
Julian Wagstaff (composer) |
| Composition date | 2011 |
| Duration (mins) | 0 |
| Category | chamber trio |
| Instrumentation | Cl Vc Pf |
| Commissioned by | The Royal Society of Chemistry (Edinburgh and SE Scotland local section) |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | 12 12 2011 Jean Johnson (clarinet), Will Conway (cello) and Scott Mitchell (piano). Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh |
| Notes | |
| Programme Note | My brief in writing this piece was that it should celebrate the past, present and future of chemistry in Edinburgh and southeast Scotland. The title refers to Einstein's observation that the distinction between the past, present and future is merely a “stubbornly persistent illusion”. The work is in three movements, none of which have titles. The first is an imagined three-way dialogue between Alexander Crum Brown (1838-1922), a professor of chemistry at Edinburgh University and a pioneer in the diagrammatic representation of compounds, the Russian composer/chemist Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) and the chemist Joseph Black (1728-1799), who discovered carbon dioxide a century earlier. The motif recalls the opening movement of the Borodin cello sonata. The second movement (of which the first section is essentially twelve-tone while the latter section essentially tonal) represents the process of chemical crystallisation, with the piano crystallising chords from the notes carried by the other two instruments. The third movement derives from my workshops with school pupils and teachers in Edinburgh schools. Participants were asked to produce note patterns on manuscript paper inspired by their knowledge of chemical structures and formulae, and everything in this movement is derived from these ideas (including the “twelve-bar blues” section at the end of the movement). I have tried to capture something of the exuberance and fun that I encountered in the classroom, as well as deeper considerations regarding the nature of our world. © Julian Wagstaff, 2011 |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
|