I Elegy
II Night Scherzo
III Ground, Chorale and Lament
In February 2022 I was beginning to sketch out this piece. My initial ideas were mercurial, lopsided and light-footed. I was working on this when Russia invaded Ukraine, on 24 February. I had been hoping that this invasion would not happen – with the benefit of hindsight it now looks inevitable, but at the time it hardly seemed possible that a European country could be invaded by its neighbour. I found that I couldn’t continue with the airy music I’d started, so put it to one side, and began work again. This time the people of Ukraine were in the forefront of my mind.
At the heart of the piece is a Ukrainian folk lament, ‘Plyve kacha’. This song has become something of an anthem for Ukrainians, and was widely sung at the Maidan Uprising in Kyiv in 2014. Though at first reading it’s the tale of a young duck heading off down the river, its deeper meaning is as a conversation between a soldier and his mother: “Dear mother, what will happen to me if I die in a foreign land?” he asks. She replies, “Well, my dear, you will be buried by other people.”
‘Plyve kacha’ forms the source material for the harmony of the first movement, and is gradually revealed in a variety of versions towards the end of the final movement. Two other Ukraine-linked themes appear. Firstly, the date of the initial invasion, 24.02.2022, is encoded into pitches, typically D-E-C-D-D-C-D-D. Secondly, the RGB colour code of the Ukrainian flag, 0, 87, 183 (blue) and 255, 215, 0 (yellow), are translated into pitches to form an important two-phrased melodic idea, typically C-A♭-G-D♭-A♭-E♭ D-F-F-D-D♭-F-C.
At the heart of the piece is the solo double bass. Its many qualities – soulful melodic expression, burnished tone colour, and an enormous range from the depths of the bottom string up to the highest harmonics – are explored to the full, and combined with a string orchestra that supports, comments, and forcefully interrupts.
Elegy interweaves an exploration and development of the flag theme with a monolithic sequence of chords that is built around an unnerving quarter-tone resolution. Night Scherzo is an evocation of a night without sleep, a night under fire, on the run and in search of shelter. The finale brings together the three main themes, with the Ground based on the date theme, the Chorale – for once with a sense of optimism which I hope is not unfounded – based on the flag theme, and the Lament a multi-stranded laying-out of ‘Plyve kacha’ within a semi-improvised soundscape.
Scenes from a Modern War takes about 24 minutes to perform. It was commissioned by the Janus Music Foundation with support from the Nicholas Berwin Charitable Trust. Written for the virtuoso bassist Toby Hughes – an inspiration in himself – and the Janus Ensemble, it was first performed by them, conducted by Michael Coleby, at St John’s Waterloo, London, on 28 April 2023.
It is dedicated to the people of Ukraine.
