(2015) – Double String Orchestra, String Quartet (2 Vla, 2 Vc), Organ pedal
“…August, in short, is the month of Nature’s perfect poise, and I should like to see it represented in painting by a Junonian woman, immobile, passionless, and happy in a cool-leaved wood, and looking neither forward nor backward, but within…”
“…All bending in trembling curves with their own fullness […] When wind plays with the perfectly level surface of the grasses their colours close in and part and knit arabesques…”
The above excerpts are taken from the short prose piece August by Edward Thomas, which acted as the overall inspiration for this work. The only other model for the music came from a certain spot on the River Usk in Monmouthshire, where the water is divided by large rocks, and on which I based the final multi-divisi part of the piece.
A large-scale 12-tone chaconne in effect, designed for a cathedral-like acoustic, the repeating harmonic backdrop is derived in part from the letters A-U-G-U-S-T.