Wedding

Wedding is a solo piano piece which may be presented in three different ways: as an audio concert piece in live performance or recording; as an audio-visual piece, performed live with visual projections or recorded on DVD; and as a gallery (or online) installation, with looped audio and visuals.
The piece was inspired by a fragment of film footage from my parents’ wedding in Edinburgh in 1968. The pitch manipulation is entirely governed by change-ringing procedures (the patterns for 5 bells – reflecting the five fingers of the pianist’s right hand – known as ‘Stedman Doubles’ and found in Fabian Stedman’s Tintinnalogia of 1668). Two lower parts are derived by means of mensuration canon.
The composer’s role is thus limited here to the selection of initial pitches and the disposition of the patterns in time and on the keyboard space. This reflects an interest in ‘automatic’ compositional processes which has been part of my compositional practice since 1998. The research question, then, is to what extent a compositional 'voice' can be heard through largely automatic processes. At the same time, the piece has a relationship to earlier literature (the piano study from Chopin to Ligeti) in aiming for a satisfying aesthetic result combined with a rigorous workout in an aspect or aspects of piano technique: here, developing finger strength and independence – and, in the second half of the piece (where the introduction of rests brings about a 6:5 rhythmic ratio between the upper two parts), polyrhythmic flexibility.

Published as part of Four Piano Pieces, August 2015
Duration: flexible; between ca 3 and 12'.
Available on Living Stones, Sargasso SCD28081: track 1 (Wedding) Performed by Christopher Scobie.