Fretwork

Upon Silence, for mezzo-soprano & 5 viols. 1990

Setting of The Long Legged Fly, by W.B.Yeats.

This late Yeats poem portrays three momentous figures in history absorbed in silent contemplation: Julius Caesar planning a crucial military campaign, Helen of Troy as an adolescent in Sparta and Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.

The verses are set in a syllabic manner, while each successive chorus is set to increasingly lengthy melismas as, like the long-legged fly above the water, the voice hovers above the viols’ now turbulent, now still stream of sound.

I have treated the viols as a new family of string instruments - three sizes, all with six strings and frets, capable of an array of hitherto unexplored techniques and sonorities. Amongst these I might mention the almost complete absence of vibrato, the novel bowing technique, the potential for numerous natural harmonics, super-fast tremoli and resonant pizzicati.

Upon Silence was written for the viol ensemble Fretwork. The first performance was given by them and the mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley as part of a London Sinfonietta concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on 30 October 1990. A provisional version was performed in May 1990 in the Purcell Room, London, with mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby, as part of the South Bank Centre’s ‘Music for Life’ day for the charity CRUSAID.

The poem Long-legged Fly is set to music by kind permission of A. P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of Anne Yeats. It was first performed in October 1992 by Fretwork with Susan Bickley mezzo-soprano.

Published by Faber Music Ltd.
Recorded by Nimbus records (see Fretwork Recordings)