Commissioned by Contemporary Music for All for Ruta Vitkauskaite.
Since 1998, much of my music has been inspired by sounds from the natural world, especially birdsong. Though my initial interest in birdsong and music was sparked by the experience of hearing an individual bird – a European blackbird – singing outside my window, and by transcribing the song of that particular bird, many of my more recent birdsong-based pieces have been more broadly inspired by the song patterns and structures of a species as a whole, in some cases even a species I have heard only in recording. Covid 19-lockdown – going on for three months and counting – has led me to refocus on the specificity of the sounds and songs around me, first grudgingly, but now, increasingly often, joyfully. After lockdown began, I initially found it very hard to compose: I was worried about so many things, and my moods varied so widely. But as I spent day, after day, after day, only in my flat or in the shared garden behind it, I came to realize that the ever-shifting soundscape of the garden was a perfect counterpoint to my own ever-shifting state of mind. The wood pigeon is variously comforting, invigorating, or annoying, depending on my own mood: the blackbird can poeticize my melancholy, or remind me of the beauty that is still all around. I began to transcribe the songs of the birds that came regularly to our garden, and as I became more familiar with the song of each individual, the experience of staying in one place became richer and more fulfilling. Gardenscape does not seek to recreate any one lockdown soundscape, but rather provides the ingredients for the performer to recreate their own series of ever-varying Glasgow garden soundscapes. (I’ve provided transcriptions of the birds that visit my garden, but the performer is certainly welcome to add transcriptions of the birds around them too.)
Each of the sound layers provided is optional (though it is hard to imagine leaving out the blackbird), and they can be combined in many different ways. The performer could pre-record most of the desired layers, and perform one of them (most likely the blackbird) live. Alternatively, they could use a looper and add layers one by one in performance. Or if there are several violinists, all layers could be performed live: this piece is particularly suitable for socially distanced and/or outdoor performance, as the irds, too, are spatially separated when they sing.
