Austerity - [based on a poem by Rick Birley]

This piece, for violin & piano, was composed alongside "Edges". It is loosely programmatic, as I also wrote the poem ''The Weather of her Soul' at this time.

The performers are Jenni Curiel (violin) and Peter Oakes (piano), to whom I am greatly indebted:




Weather of her Soul

She peers into her glass
a toad stares back
She steers her wooden stare
through bosky grey to fields of furrowed clay
shared and scored anew each uncalled-for day
With roughshod care
time’s rivelled hack
reflects through her etched weatherglass

She peers into her glass and sees beyond
the dullish stare stares back
from ash veneered opacity
She holds the stare and starts to float
guides her ancient sonde
across the pages of her almanac
to the crowded footnote
of her existential vast extensity

She peers into her glass and passes through
floats through the black lights of her eyes
and humming a tuneless barcarole
drifts into the inner void
The faintly azure blue
stares back in thin disguise
and brushes past the membranes of her soul
vibrates the familiar schizoid

Here she sees another face
reflecting in a room of glass
whose panes touch at the darkness without
Whose edges of infinity reflect in truth
the greater keenness of her space
Whose focus seeks an edge on which to shout
but never sharpens its ephemeral mass
nor matures its sallow youth
 
That wretched soul of hers
whose heart is filled with rarest art
lies wrecked on the low-tide shore
midst wrack and mortal ruin
waiting for the reaper’s cart
The journeyman whose stealth avers
the artless truth of life’s assassin
The nevermore of evermore
 
Rick Birley 
6th March 2008
 
glass - mirror
bosk – thicket, or little wood
shared – ploughed [ploughshare]; also shares the image
score – notch, gash, scratch; also as in music
roughshod – provided with horse-shoes with projecting nails to afford extra grip
rivelled – wrinkled [OE]
hack – a horse, esp. one in a sorry condition. Also a gash, a notch
weatherglass - barometer
sonde – [Fr] device for obtaining information about atmospheric or weather conditions at high altitude
existential – relating to human existence
extensity – massiveness or spatial quality in sensation from which perception of extension is derived
barcarole – gondolier’s song, or similar
azure – of a faint blue, sky-coloured
schizoid – one with schizophrenic personality – introversion, tending to fantasise, duality
keenness – sharpness – also as in having an acute or penetrating mind; also intense
ephemeral – short-lived -  ie the mayfly whose adult life is very short – often lasting but a single day.
sallow – pale yellow [of skin]
wrack – seaweed cast ashore, stranded; also wreck; also vengeance
aver – declare to be true
journeyman – a hired workman, one hired by the day; also one who is competent at his trade [no longer an apprentice]
artless – guileless, unaffected, simple; also inartistic