w415
| Title | Cuisle na Bóchna |
| Contributors |
Derek Ball (composer) |
| Composition date | 2001 2001 |
| Duration (mins) | 6 |
| Category | chamber electroacoustic quartet string |
| Instrumentation | 2 Vn Va Vc Tape |
| Commissioned by | |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | 11 11 2001 Saltire Quartet Hugh Lane Gallery, Parnell Square, Dublin |
| Notes | |
| Programme Note | "I live as the spray from the wave at the wave's apex, Airborne, of water and beyond it." "Cuisle na Bóchna", pulse of the ocean, is a series of slow cycles which reflect childhood memories of the North Atlantic off the Donegal coast in north-west Ireland, especially one disconcerting journey on a little fishing boat in a big swell. The piece has at its centre the idea of boundlessness. In a very obvious way, the ocean itself is limitless. Despite our attempts to name and categorise areas of it, the ocean is a continuum, a medium which reaches around the world and which forms part of our universal shared experience and mythology. The music of Cuisle na Bóchna is, like the ocean, infinitely changeable, no two performances being exactly alike. Although superficially minimalist, in fact it contains no repetition, its surface detail constantly rearranging itself in subtly new patterns which can be thought of as limitless in their variety, like the sea itself. The version of the piece described here lasts 6 minutes, but there is nothing to stop a performance lasting 6 hours or 6 days. A recording is available of the first performance of the piece, at the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin, by the Saltire Quartet : a Scottish group which at the time had a French 2nd violinist and which was playing the music of an Irish composer - a real 'collaboration sans frontières'. The piece was composed in 2001. This updated programme note was written in April 2005.The subtitle is quoted, with permission, from the poem "Gravity" by Scots poet Colin Dewar. The title itself was suggested by Irish scribhneoir (writer) Gabriel Rosenstock. |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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