GHOULISH AIRS

FOR SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (2019 - 2021), WRITTEN FOR THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

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Ghoulish Airs, written for the London Symphony through the LSO Discovery Panufnik Scheme and supported by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, takes place in a hellish dimension of Oscar Wilde’s making. In his short story, The Canterville Ghost, an American family moves into an old haunted Tudor manor and comically fails to be haunted by an Elizabethan ghost. As the tale progresses, Virginia, the Otis family’s only daughter, bonds with the ghost and learns that he may only die if a pure maiden begs the angel of death for mercy upon the ghost’s soul. Out of kindness, Virginia agrees to help the ghost, and he leads her into a ghoulish void filled with evil spirits.

Aural illusions are used to sonically describe the fabric of this ghostly dimension. In the piece’s first section, scales seem to descend and rise eternally, rhythms accelerate constantly and melodies project echoes out from themselves. These illusions which allude to the infinite are used to depict the malicious, strange, swirling atmosphere into which Virginia and the ghost step into. As these swirling orchestral textures come to a climax, a lone melody in the viola and alto flute, which represents Virginia and her steadfast purity, ushers in the piece’s second section. Still, the evil spirits continue to plague Virginia: strings scurry around the alto flute and viola, brass and wind chords stab at them, and ghostly resonances from the harp, vibraphone, celesta and marimba jump out from nowhere. In the third section, materials from the first and second section are superimposed. Virginia’s melody fights against being swallowed up by the swirling, illusory texture of evil spirits. At the piece’s climax, midnight tolls, thunder strikes, ‘a strain of unearthly music float[s] through the air’, and Virginia returns from the void having granted the ghost peace and absolution. The small coda which ends the piece represents an imagining of this ‘unearthly music’: microtonal harmonies waft through the air, and a Gagaku influenced flute trio loosely evokes the Garden of Death, where ‘the nightingale sings all night long… and the cold crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.’

Ghoulish Airs is dedicated to the memory of my late father, Kemsing Tay.