Steinmetzarbeiten

Programme Note

Written in 1997 for the Yorkshire and Humberside Young Composer's Competition and performed at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Steinmetzarbeiten won category A of this competition. It was first performed by Nicholas Hodges (piano) with the Athelas Ensemble. This piece was written after finding a limited edition print of Elizabeth Scherffig's eight Steinmetzarbeiten drawings of the in a second-hand bookshop. Close-up viewing of the images shows evidence of a pencil that has always been moving, shifting constantly and perhaps effortlessly over the paper. This conveys movement, change, light and shade. Pulling back to view the image from a distance, the drawings are of slabs of stone, locked in dense and un-movable layers. This piece reflects a similar contradiction. The music appears to be perpetually on the move, trying to go somewhere but it is actually stuck; continually representing the same ascending scale.