In 2007, Jim Aitchison composed music for the event Towards a New Laocoön at the Henry Moore Institute, curated by Stephen Feeke, performed by Philippa Mo. The music developed out of an earlier commission from violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved to create a response to Laocoön for the Enlightenment Project at the British Museum in 2006.
The music responds to the ancient Greek Hellenistic sculpture, Laocoön and His Sons, residing both in the Vatican, and in the form of an early C18th red wax replica, in the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum. The sculpture depicts the Trojan priest, Laocoön, and his sons, killed by serpents sent by the gods, for alerting the Trojans to the deception of the wooden horse presented to them by the Greeks.
The title, ‘Fugue Refractions’, articulates every aspect I have drawn upon in the composition. ‘Refractions’ alludes to the idea of the sculpture passing through so many filters: of myth, time, history, thought, of art, etc. The Fugue is an iconic formal container that has persisted through music history where protagonists, or ‘voices,’ converse in a partially pre-ordained choreography. There is also some sense of the fugue representing for the composer an artistic and intellectual challenge of dexterity. This challenge was greatly increased by the task of creating what became a 3-voice fugue for a predominantly solo instrument. Finally, in the field of psychology, the fugue state is a condition where one’s previous sense of identity is significantly eroded and either amnesia and/or new personality traits may emerge.
- Jim Aitchison 2007
