Earth and Sky Reflect Each Other

Details:
Earth and Sky Reflect Each Other was premiered at State of the Nation 2001; this performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3
Hear and Now in 2001. Further performances have been given by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, CBSO Centre,
Birmingham, and at the University of York. The work was recorded to CD by Ensemble Expose in 2005 as part of the British
Music Information Centre’s recording project, ‘Critical Notice’.
Portfolio:Programme from Premiere.

Context:
The commission was part of the pilot scheme for the London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper scheme, aimed at enabling
composers to develop their compositional research through extensive workshops with the ensemble. The workshops took the
form of a close collaborative process in which notated compositional ideas formed the basis for further improvisation. The
research questions addressed in the work concern notions of authorship, performer/composer interaction in the creative process
and empirical/pragmatic approaches to large-scale musical structure. The strings form the backbone of the work both in texture
and timbre. The string parts are a fusion of both notated and improvised ideas developed during the workshops. Indeed, the
structural form of the work, in which musical material is explored through a process of repetition and variation, is also a result of
negotiation between original intent and reaction to the improvisations. The non-linear nature of the musical ideas, which arises
from the composer’s ongoing research into non-narrative structural forms, was enhanced by the improvisation involved in the
working process. Further discussion of treatment of texture and timbre in this piece is included in the composer’s PhD
commentary (‘Notes to accompany the portfolio of compositions’), University of Sheffield, 2003.