North

The inspiration for the orchestral work, North, is multiple. In preparation for composition of a chamber opera based on Oscar Wilde’s story, The Selfish Giant, I was struck by the musical possibilities inherent in an eternal winter, peopled by the characters of Frost, Snow, Wind and Hail. North, without being representational, is also a remembrance of winter landscapes of my childhood home in Winnipeg, Canada. Winter was always a season of extremes; blinding snow carried on fierce winds, building to eight foot drifts, contrasted with still and silent nights when the world appeared to have been re-created out of diamond, very different to the mild seasons I have come to know in Britain.

If the inspiration has its source in the natural landscape, the musical starting point for North is derived from the Canadian cultural landscape. The piece is based around the only known Christmas carol to have originated in Canada, ‘Iesous Ahatonnia (The Huron Carol)’, a piece which represents a synthesis of medieval French and native American cultures. The carol exists on several levels throughout North, including a background thread holding the piece together and in various foreground transformations.

The shape of North does not derive from any pre-existent form, but was conceived as an imaginary ballet. The four personifications of winter: Frost, Snow, Wind and Hail become different musical layers, each related to the carol as melodic, harmonic (spectral), gestural and rhythmic interpretations of it. The piece is built in continuous sections, in which the individual musical layers are either presented as solos or in various combinations (where they exert subtle influence over each other), and are shaped by the envisioned dance. Toward the end of the piece, three of the musical layers come together in a climactic dance, underpinned by the constant rhythm of the Cree Grass Dances (or Pow Wows) of my native Province. It is to this dance for the Manitou or spirit of winter and the North, that the subtitle, Kiwîtinohk Âcâhk, refers.