Program note

This piece was written for and is dedicated to ensemble hand werk. It was premiered on the occasion of Crossroads – International Contemporary Music Festival, Salzburg (2018), as part of the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the SEM (Studio für Elektronische Musik, Universität Mozarteum), Salzburg, Austria. The work is organised around the concept of the scowle and recontextualises its singular geological and geomorphological characteristics as potential analogies for sound. It treats sonic materials as musical forces, each with specific properties and potentials.

I have here pursued, with sustained focus, the notions of sound transformation and morphology, and the aftermath of the transmission of waves and audio signals, seeking a particular expressive register by suppressing periodic pulses and any sense of beat. The sonic events therefore endeavour to construct a ritualistic, indeterminate, amorphous and fluid auditory space, favouring an absorbed and integral mode of listening. Almost all of the electronic materials were produced by processing sounds created and captured during my experiments and research between 2013 and 2018 on electromagnetic fields, the use of sound exciters and tactile transducers, and the resonant behaviour of prepared objects– notably rigid metallic elements such as springs of varying thicknesses and lengths of up to two metres.

The title of the piece, scowle, is suggested to derive from the Brythonic term crowll, a word meaning a hollow or a cave. It may also originate from the Welsh ysgil, meaning a recess. The term was first recorded in 1287 in reference to a village called Scwelle. Scowles range from amorphous, shallow pits to uneven, labyrinthine hollows typically measuring a few metres deep. In modern geology the term denotes a distinctive landscape feature of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England, traditionally recognised as the remains of medieval iron-ore extraction. These landforms occur only in particular outcrops– sandstone, limestone and dolomite– and their distribution reflects the processes by which they formed. Their genesis results from a complex interplay of geological and geomorphological processes together with human intervention.