AFTER IMAGES
FOR SINFONIETTA (2017 - 2018), written for the GUILDHALL NEW MUSIC SOCIETY, self-conducted
“If discoursing on a difficult problem were like carrying weights, when many horses can carry more sacks of grain than a single horse, I would agree that many discourses would do more than a single one; but discoursing is like coursing, not like carrying, and one Barbary courser can go faster than a hundred Frieslands” - Galileo
The idea of writing a piece that works with speed illusions was sparked by reading the above quote by Galileo in Calvino’s chapter on Quickness in his Six Memos for the Millenium. The piece gives the illusion of constant acceleration – which is impossible, especially since electronics are excluded from the work’s instrumental forces. I chose the title After Images because many cartoon characters are shown to be moving so fast that blurry after images of themselves are left behind. I was also fascinated by speed’s power to distort: when you hold a pencil in the middle and wobble it fast, the pencil bends – an optical illusion. The first films were founded on similar principles. Illusions of movement were made by flipping through still images at high speed. Our eyes are fooled, and the illusions successful, because they perceive fast moving images as a continuous blur, and so the title also puns on the fact that we are living in a “post-still-photograph era” – after the invention of film, photographs and drawings can be made to move, and are no mere stills.
An After Image is ‘a visual which stays present even after a stimulant [an image] ceases or is taken away… It occurs due to a receptor [the eye] and neurological activities that are subsequent to the ceasing of the stimulant.’ As a result the perceiver continues to see the image even after it is no longer present. The closest auditory equivalent of the optical illusion is perhaps the echo: a sound is heard as having been repeated, even though the sound source that originally made that sound has ceased sounding. Although After Images does not use literal echoes, it does use the eye’s perception of an After Image as a formal conceit: the piece’s formal shape consists of a series of variations, and each variation is a faster variation on the last. The listener might perhaps think of each variation as a distorted echo of the previous variation: a sonic image is presented, and then progressively distorted by speed.
After Images was written for the Guildhall New Music Society and was premiered in November 2017.
Performers:
Flute/picc/alto - Fiona Sweeney
Oboe/Cor A - Caitlin Heathcote
Clarinet/Bass - Isha Crichlow
Bassoon - Sarah Sesu
Horn - Millie Lihoreau
Trumpet - Patrick Wilson
Trombone 1 - Jake Jones
Trombone 2 - James Graham
Percussion 1 - Hugh Padmore
Percussion 2 - Charlie Hodge
Piano - Jason Gong
Violin 1 - James WIcks
Violin 2 - Victoria Farrell-Reed
Viola 1 - Katherine Clarke
Viola 2 - Hannah Gardiner
Cello - Peter Davis
Bass - Patrick Phillip
"Conductor" - Alex Tay
Post production - Mark Bowler, One Glass Eye Records