Name: Yeats, Marc: searching always for home (violin and piano version)
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Yeats, Marc: searching always for home (violin and piano version)

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This is a timecode-supported polytemporal duo for violin and piano.

Dedicated to Peter Sheppard Skaerved.

There is no programmatic intention in what unfolds as sound in this piece: any or no relationship to the title and the sounding music is forged at the discretion of the composer, performer and listener. Despite this statement, there is an unfolding of material that manifests through contrasting sections of music to hopefully provide the listener with a compelling experience even without programmatic intent. It is the interplay between and within these sections that is the narrative content of the composition.
The title is taken from a poem of my own from a set of 27 poems written in November 2005. The poem is shown in full here:

We travel on each other’s love
Strange, wild adventures
Territories unknown
Sometimes
Lost
Blind alleys
Or mazes
Bewilder
Searching always
For home

The content found in searching always for home stems originally from two sources: first, the violin material self-borrowed and enhanced from the violin 1 part of the 2016 string quartet, observation 5; and second, the piano materials self-borrowed from (among other sources) the 2020 set of 15 pieces for piano titled Toy Box, itself composed from self-borrowed and transformed materials found in pneuma (March 2020) for solo contrabass recorder that was subsequently transformed in the solo piano piece Conrad’s Toye (April 2020), composed immediately before nearly all my poems are letters to you (May 2020) for solo harp. It is the material from nearly all my poems are letters to you that are transformed to constitute the Toy Box pieces which subsequently find their way into this work.

The violin and piano have a heterogeneous relationship. Each plays in simultaneously independent tempi from one another bringing together materials from different sources that though linked, are separated by a range of transformational processes. These two very different sounding instruments are not brought together to attempt any kind of blending of texture, sonority or material. Instead, the two instruments create a dialogue of differences, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes antagonistic and extreme, but always expressive, colourful and dynamic.

The writing for both instruments is virtuosic. Although the violin plays almost continually throughout the piece, the piano is only occasionally present, delivering its material in bursts of varying length and energy. This intermittent piano material emphasises the heterogeneous nature of the instrument’s relationships but also amplifies the dramatic condition of their encounters.

There are two iterations of the piece titled searching always for home, both of which were created at the same time: the first is this duo piece for violin and piano; the second, a solo violin version that is, for all intent and purposes, the solo material from the duo slightly adapted to become a substantial solo work in its own right.

I am always fascinated how the combination of musical materials with other content, in this case, the solo material when presented as a duo with piano, affects how these materials interact in time, constantly changing the vertical, harmonic and rhythmic relationships of the combined elements to alter how we perceive identical material in different contexts. These contextual changes can radically alter our perception of the sounding music.

Duration: 18.30

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