STUART MACRAE HEBRIDES ENSEMBLE CHAMBER MUSIC
1
I am Prometheus (2018) [15:14]
premiered by Hebrides Ensemble 2
Dark Liquid (2020) [2:34]
3
Ixion (2013) [16:48]
4
cladonia bellidiflora (2014, rev. 2020) [6:33]
5
Tol-Pedn (1999) [3:52]
6
Lento in memoriam Peter Maxwell Davies (2016) [2:19]
7
Ursa Minor (2020) [5:32]
for Hebrides Ensemble and Delphian Records 8
fthinoporinos (2001) [7:26]
9
Diversion (The room behind the room behind the room) (2020) [3:09]
10
Parable (2013)
[13:11]
commissioned by & dedicated to Hebrides Ensemble
Total playing time
[76:46]
All tracks except track 5 are premiere recordings All works except tracks 5 & 8 are published by the composer. For more information or to purchase scores visit www.stuartmacrae.com Recorded on 12-14 August 2021 in The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: James Waterhouse 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Piano: Steinway model D, serial no 599478 (2015) Piano technician: Norman Motion Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: John Fallas
Session photography: foxbrushfilms.com Cover image: Boreal constellation of Ursa Minor, engraving from Johann Hevelius (1611–1687), Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uronographia (Gdansk, 1690) / Photo © NPL – DeA Picture Library / Bridgeman Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com
@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records
Notes on the music With its very first words – from a text written especially by the composer – Stuart MacRae’s I am Prometheus draws us straight into the experience of the Titanic hero: ‘At first, you imagine me sitting.’ Shackled to a rock by Zeus and doomed to eternal torment for the crime of stealing fire and giving it to humanity, Prometheus describes the heavy chains, the jagged rock and the swirling, molten core of the earth beneath him. The music’s patchwork of searching chords, queasy microtones and hushed tremolos suggests the intimate and human rather than the mythic or immortal. MacRae has a knack for capturing the tactile and the emotional in sound: the chains’ downward pull, the sharpness of the rock and, in the work’s second half, the unbearable vastness of eternity. Only once do text and music reach for the heroic, but Prometheus’s declaration of himself – ‘I am Prometheus, the Titan’ – and its accompanying musical resolve is easily swallowed up by the devastating slowness of time that follows. When he affirms himself once more at the end of the work – ‘I am Prometheus, I stand’ – it is clear that his chances are slim: he will eventually be freed by Heracles, we know, but what endures for now is not him but his punishment. I am Prometheus is, in its composer’s words, about ‘a kind of exceptionalism, about Prometheus’s position as a Titan: neither
man nor God, subordinate to Zeus, blessed – or cursed – with the gift of foresight, human in his suffering and demeanour but, nevertheless, a different kind of being’. It is the second of three pieces on the topic of Prometheus that MacRae wrote between 2017 and 2019 for the Lammermuir Festival; the story has fascinated him since he first heard Luigi Nono’s ‘tragedy of listening’ Prometeo as a teenager – ‘the first piece of contemporary music I was blown away by’. Mythical or quasi-mythical figures (many from Greek myth) recur throughout MacRae’s work, among them Narcissus, Daphne and Macbeth. What unites them are their flaws. In Parable, a setting of Wilfred Owen’s ‘The Parable of the Old Men and the Young’, it is Abraham who takes centre stage. The work begins with him gathering and chopping wood for the fire on which he intends to sacrifice Isaac, his son, portrayed in an instrumental introduction by percussive col legno battuto, toneless flute sounds and piano attacks so high they shade into noise. Although he is writing for only one singer, MacRae sets the voices of the Narrator, Isaac and the Angel who tries to stay Abraham’s hand as distinct personae. As in Prometheus, a mythological story is told at the level of human experience – Abraham’s concentrated chopping, Isaac’s confusion – but with the viewpoint too of the mythic and immortal in the voice of the Angel.
Although MacRae retains the iambic rhythm of Owen’s verse, he slows it down almost past the point of comprehension in order to enter into every moment of the text. Owen’s poem similarly zooms in and out, and with a final shift in perspective launches us into the all too real landscape of First World War Europe: ignoring the Angel’s injunctions to offer instead the ‘Ram of Pride’, Abraham raises his knife and kills his son, ‘And half the seed of Europe, one by one.’ MacRae emphasises the climactic horror of this moment by inversion, erasing his music to nothing but the dry pecking of a violin, as Abraham’s woodcutting is transformed into a nameless count of the deaths of war. Ixion is the first character (of many!) in Greek myth to murder a family member, in his case his father-in-law Deioneus. Although he was pitied by Zeus for this crime, his desire for Zeus’s wife, Hera, was a step too far. As a trap, Zeus created a cloud shaped in Hera’s image; thus tricked into betraying his heart, Ixion was strapped by Zeus to a giant, heavenly wheel of fire as punishment. On this occasion MacRae does not tell a story, but presents an image from several viewpoints. His work is in eight discrete but interrelated sections or ‘moments’, each focusing on a particular musical trajectory or atmosphere. The first contains all the elements of the rest: broken chords or
arpeggios that can open outwards in different ways, declamatory repeated notes, a shortlong rhythm, a sonorous held chord and a very quiet emerging chord. These elements are rotated in the remaining seven moments, sometimes greatly varied, but always circling around the same place; indeed, they are all related to each other too, like the turning mechanisms of a clock. Today we would call Ixion’s wheel a galaxy, the largest of objects, perceptible only from a vast distance. From thousands of light years away it appears infinitely slow-moving; but zoom in to Ixion’s point of view and it is a continuous, rushing hell. Such shifts in perspective are central to MacRae’s work: mythological stories told in details of human actions, or experiences of extreme turmoil transmuted by distance into stasis or calm. The first time he considered this idea was in the short Tol-Pedn, named after a headland in southwest Cornwall, close to Land’s End. Here, on a coastal walk, MacRae experienced the striking contrast of a sea that appeared placid from the top of the cliffs but was a mass of crashing waves at the bottom: amidst slow melody and delicate voiced chords, the sea’s turbulence is remotely suggested by percussion interjections and one moment of (restrained) explosiveness. The work was composed for ensemble recherche’s Witten ‘In nomine’ project, and in response to the specifics of that commission is based on a
Notes on the music stretched and distorted version of the melody of the Benedictus from William Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices. Two further pieces explore extremes of perspective in the natural world, from the microscopic constitution of a lichen to the cosmic scale of a constellation. cladonia bellidiflora is a form of lichen – known as the ‘Toy Soldier’ after the characteristic red tips to its branches – found in the northwest British Isles. MacRae encountered an example ‘on a wet, sullen winter’s day’ in the Affric Hills of the Scottish Highlands. Neither alga nor fungus but a complete symbiosis of both, lichens present considerable problems for conventional models of biological classification. Making a metaphor from this idea, MacRae’s duet for violin and cello entwines its two performers together until they become a single, composite organism. In sympathy with the lichen’s own entangled growth, MacRae composed the work in short bursts, rarely extending or developing what he had already written but allowing the music to follow its own wandering path. Another form of wandering inspired Ursa Minor, written specially for this recording: the night-time walks MacRae would take from his home during the lockdown of winter 2020–21, during which the constellation appeared to him as a reassuring emblem of permanence. Reflecting that continuity – another
transmutation of turmoil into calm via the medium of distance – MacRae’s composition is monothematic in style. Like Ixion, a sense of eternity is evoked by a music that loops round and round itself like string. The mood is entirely different, however: gentle, stabilising, even hopeful. Apart from occasional digressions or brief ornamentations, the ensemble plays (in various combinations) as one, presenting a fundamentally unchanging thread from a variety of perspectives. fthinoporinos takes its title from the Greek word for ‘autumnal’. It is a transcription for violin and piano of the second movement of MacRae’s Violin Concerto, written for Tasmin Little and premiered at the 2001 BBC Proms. The concerto was composed while MacRae was living in Paris, and the atmosphere of the second movement came to him on walks around the city during autumn 2000. As he continued to work that winter, he listened frequently to Xenakis’s music; when the unexpected news came in February 2001 that Xenakis had died, MacRae’s concerto movement became a tribute. His title was translated into Greek and his music took on qualities of Xenakis’s: harmonies became monolithic blocks, melodies unbroken beams. fthinoporinos is not a stylistic homage as such – Macrae’s dramatic instincts are far removed from Xenakis’s uncompromising architecture – but it does acknowledge a debt.
Another debt is repaid in the short Lento in memoriam Peter Maxwell Davies. MacRae first became familiar with Davies’s music in the early 1990s when, as a teenager, he did work experience in Edinburgh with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Encouraged to explore the records in the orchestra’s library he took and absorbed those they had of Davies’s music (including the orchestra’s 1986 recording of the Sinfonia and Sinfonia Concertante). By sheer coincidence, MacRae bumped into Davies that week on Prince’s Street, recognising him from the photo on one of the record sleeves. After that they maintained a periodic relationship – MacRae had a lesson with him a few years later and they talked frequently at concerts of each other’s music. Lento, written for a series of tributes commissioned by the pianist Rolf Hind after Davies’s death in 2016, consciously incorporates elements – including polymodality and dissonant harmonic resolutions – that characterised Davies’s style at the time MacRae first met him. Such passing adoptions of other composers’ styles or techniques point up MacRae’s deliberate intent to attempt something new each time he writes: thus the monothematicism of Ursa Minor, the throughcomposition of cladonia bellidiflora, the ‘moment’ form of Ixion or the writing of an original text for I am Prometheus. Recently, this attitude has seen him increasingly incorporate tonality into his music; in I am
Prometheus, for example, the clarity or brightness of triadic harmonies provide points of reference for the Titan’s remaking of himself. The two piano miniatures Dark Liquid and Diversion (The room behind the room behind the room) point most clearly to this tendency. Written at the beginning of 2020, they were composed, says MacRae, ‘almost as improvisations’, with an intentional simplicity and spontaneity of style: a final zoom-in to just the composer at his instrument. © 2022 Tim Rutherford-Johnson Tim Rutherford-Johnson is a critic and writer on new music. He is author of Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989 (University of California Press).
Texts 1
I am Prometheus At first, you imagine me sitting. My head drooping between my shoulders, back slumped, bent double, knees jutting like icebergs. I wear a chain, fastened to a shackle about my neck. Adamantine. A chain so hard and heavy you think it should pull me groundward through these broken shattering crags and the depthless mountains they crown, through vast caverns and hidden lakes, to the very centre of the Earth, where I should swim and melt and swirl with the molten, searing core until there is nothing left of me. But it does not. And I do not. I am Prometheus, the Titan. My world is not your world. If once it was then I have forgotten it, through countless generations, countless generations chained and mauled, frozen and devoured, seared, tormented. Eviscerated.
Yet I persist. I am still here, waiting, waiting for the one who will set me free! I have seen that this will come to pass and so it will; for I see all things. I am Prometheus. I stand. Stuart MacRae (b. 1976) Copyright © 2017 Stuart MacRae
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Parable So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, And builded parapets and trenches there, And stretched forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him. Behold, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, – And half the seed of Europe, one by one. Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), ‘The Parable of the Old Men and the Young’
Biographies With programmes that are diverse, imaginative and inspiring, Hebrides Ensemble has established itself as one of the foremost chamber music collectives in the UK. Cofounded and led by its Artistic Director, the cellist and conductor William Conway, the Ensemble is renowned for its fresh and intelligent approach to programming, which places contemporary music at the heart of a diverse range of repertoire.
using livestreaming and cutting-edge digital technology. The present recording is the fifth in a series of composer portrait albums released in partnership with Delphian Records; previous volumes have focused on music by Judith Weir, Nigel Osborne, Peter Maxwell Davies (EVM Award for New Music Recording of the Year at the 2018 Scottish Awards for New Music) and James MacMillan (the premiere recording of Since it was the day of Preparation …, which went straight to No 1 in the Specialist Classical Chart upon release in July 2016).
The Ensemble’s strength is its flexibility; it draws its performers from a pool of the most outstanding musicians in the UK and beyond, ensuring the exceptional performance standards hebridesensemble.com for which it has become renowned. This is an international ensemble with its roots in Scottish Joshua Ellicott’s sweetculture, a collective which performs regularly toned, flexible yet powerful at venues and festivals throughout the UK and lyric tenor voice and versatile Europe and is regularly featured in broadcasts musicianship are apparent in for BBC Radio 3. the wide range of repertoire in which he excels, from In recent years, the Ensemble has given song to opera to concert. premieres at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, In the field of early music he at Kings Place and Wigmore Hall in London, at the Aldeburgh Festival and at Edinburgh has worked with conductors such as Nikolaus International Festival. In 2018, Hebrides Harnoncourt, Sir Roger Norrington, Harry Ensemble made its debut appearance at the Bicket, Harry Christophers and Paul McCreesh, BBC Proms. Hebrides Horizons supports the and has developed a particular affinity with next generation of performers, composers, the works of Bach, Handel and Monteverdi. artistic directors and cultural leaders through He also enjoys interpreting later repertoire its mentoring programme, and Hebrides Digital and has been privileged to work with such allows audiences around the world to be part luminaries as Sir Mark Elder, Daniel Harding of every performance the Ensemble gives, and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Recent highlights include the role of Tempo Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno in a new production at the Royal Danish Opera, the Evangelist in a staged production of Bach’s St John Passion at Teatro Arriaga in Spain, a new work by Stuart MacRae and Britten’s Canticle No 5 at the Lammermuir Festival, Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Handel’s Messiah with the New York Philharmonic, Florestan Leonore in a return to the Freiburger Barockorchester, Handel’s Saul with the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, and his debut at Théâtre du Châtelet singing the Evangelist. Marcus Farnsworth was awarded first prize in the 2009 Wigmore Hall / Kohn Foundation International Song Competition. He appears regularly in recital throughout the UK and abroad, including the Wigmore Hall, Oxford Lieder Festival, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and at La Monnaie, Brussels. He is also a founding member of the Myrthen Ensemble, and is the founder and artistic director of the Southwell Music Festival. Marcus’s expansive repertoire ensures that he is in demand with some of the UK and Europe’s major arts organisations, both in
opera and concert. He regularly collaborates with the Bergen Philharmonic, London Symphony and BBC Symphony orchestras and with English National Opera, most notably in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie, John Adams’ Doctor Atomic (conducted by the composer) and in the world premiere of Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s Last Man Standing. He has also appeared at Teatro Real, Madrid and with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. A strong supporter of contemporary composers, Marcus has sung works by John Tavener, Sally Beamish, Thomas Larcher and David Sawer, among others. He performed Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King at the BBC Proms with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Siân Edwards, and was subsequently invited to perform the same piece with the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
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