3 minute read
THEORY OF THE EARTH | Jay Capperauld, Composer
THEORY OF THE EARTH
Jay Capperauld, Composer
St Mary’s Music School’s ‘New Music’ project, led by Dr Valerie Pearson, celebrates composition, creativity and community using the topography of the Seven Hills of Edinburgh as inspiration. Jay Capperauld shares his thoughts on the creative process behind the first first Seven Hills Project composition, Theory of the Earth, which premiered in June 2021.
“I was really drawn to Alexander McCall Smith’s poem Arthur’s Seat and Geology, primarily because of its highly evocative imagery and the descriptions of Arthur’s Seat and its mythology. I could immediately imagine a musical landscape.
I tend to approach composition with ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ on the one hand - essentially the pragmatics and practicalities of who is playing what on which instruments and how that all comes together to form the piece – and with ‘whys’ on the other hand. To me, the whys are much more exciting because they relate to the artistry of the composition. What I mean by that is you can ask questions around why an instrument is acting in a certain way and why does that then relate to the concept of the music. I find those questions exciting as a composer because they open us up to ask bigger questions… and that brings me on to James Hutton, who’s regarded as the founder of modern geology.
Alexander refers to Hutton in his poem and to the important discoveries that he made on Arthur’s Seat. Hutton was a man who was in search of the answers to the big questions - why are we here and how did we get to this point in time? What Hutton did was to analyse rock formations (a section of rock on Arthur’s Seat is known as Hutton’s Section) and from the results of this work he put forward the idea that the Earth was made up through a continual process of renewal and decay that happened over millions of years. At the time, it was a controversial doctrine that unseated long held religious notions about how the earth was created and how old it was. And so you’ve got Alexander’s poem, you’ve got Arthur’s Seat itself and you’ve got James Hutton’s findings. How do I put all of that into music? “It’s a privilege to be involved in this project which offers a huge range of benefits for young people and wider communities. Through Seven Hills workshops, we’ll go on to introduce the young musicians of St Mary’s Music School to Higher and Advanced Higher Music pupils in schools right across Scotland, creating greater access to high quality music making and high quality composition experience.”
Part of the concept for Theory of the Earth is driven by Hutton’s findings, a really important aspect as the process of decay is reflected in the very design of the composition. I wanted to write a piece where we can literally hear the Earth’s primordial processes, that renewal and decay present in these elemental, embryonic musical ideas as they’re built up in layers, much in the same way as rock formations are built up.The music didn’t have to lend itself to material that was going to be incredibly difficult to play because I wanted it to be so fragmentary that any instrument or any musician would be able to approach it.
The initial line up of instruments was percussion, piano, wind and brass. However, as writing during the pandemic meant that wind and other breathing instruments couldn’t be included, I changed the scoring to percussion, piano and string quartet instead. As restrictions ease, I’m planning to add flutes and oboes, clarinet and bassoons into the mix. I wanted to create a score that was going to be instantly accessible and playable by a wide variety of musicians so that anyone could be involved. Essentially, it’s an open score.”
