Nightfalling III:
Burnt Out
Media:
Music for piano, percussion and tape.
Duration: 14'10
Date: 1995
Commissioned by: BBC Radio 3
Audio Extract
File Size: 72kb Duration: 0'10
From a live recording, Stockholm 1995, with
Kristine Scholz, piano and Magnus Einarssohn, percussion
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The initial spark came from a turn-of-the-century novel by Paul Lepin, entitled Severin's Journey into the Dark. Severin wanders the night-time streets of old Prague in search of some kind of salvation, but instead finds only deeper and darker depravities. Lepin describes these restless nights as 'the burnt out ends of smoky days'.
My aim was to capture the spirit of Severin's wanderings, but to superimpose the contemporary backdrop of a modern-day metropolis such as Birmingham or London (two cities where I spent many restless nights wandering in search of source recordings!). I wanted to evoke the Dionysian intoxication and exhilaration of the metropolitan nightscape, the noise and bright lights - but also the darker side; the dirt, the sleaze, the violence; and the sense of irresponsibility and dispossession the city night breathes.
The action begins in an almost deserted shopping mall, just as the last shoppers leave for home...
- Additional Information
- Commissioned
by BBC Radio 3 as one of a series of 'Nocturnes' for the late-night contemporary music programme Midnight Oil.
- Performed by
Philip Mead and Simon Limbrick in the Music Live 95 festival in Birmingham
in May '95, and broadcast on Radio 3.
- Performed by
Kristine Scholz and Magnus Einarssohn at
the Electronic Art Festival in Stockholm in September '95, and broadcast
on Swedish Radio.
- Selected by the
BBC for presentation at the International Rostrum on Electro-Acoustic
Music, 1996.
- Performed
at the 1998 ICMC in Michigan. Toured in the UK in 1999 by York-based
ensemble Black Hair.
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