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'Across a clear blue sky' (2009) was inspired by Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Horace and the Thunder’, written after the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre in 2001. In the past I have set some of Heaney’s work to music for singers but this was the first time I took the opportunity to respond to one of his poems in a purely instrumental way. The freedom that came with this approach brought a sense of adventure to the writing process which I hope is mirrored in the piece itself.
Heaney has an ability to always respond to diverse aspects of the human experience with insight and dignity, and I attempted to underpin the dark and aggressive elements in this piece of music with a sanguinity that I hope will acknowledge the poet’s influence on it.
I decided to incorporate some extra items into the performance, namely two portable analogue radios for (mainly) white noise and a number of drumming toys for the end of the work (all to be played by the quartet). The purpose of incorporating these items is deliberately ambiguous – some listeners might understand the drumming toys to be an ironic comment on the idea of war; others might take them as simply another sound source. Similarly, the presence of the radios might be taken literally as the idea of someone trying to find news about the event that inspired the piece while others, again, might hear them as a background ‘wash’ out of which the instruments emerge. It is not for me to say how they should be perceived.
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Dromahair
Ireland