Double orchestra, solo marimba, solo timpani
Duration: 17’
Commissioned by the Harry Woolhouse Charitable Trust for the 25th anniversary of Imperial College Sinfonietta. First performance, 9 June 2024, Great Hall, Imperial College, London.
Main orchestra: 2+1,2,2,2; 2,3,3,1; 2 perc (bd, quijada, plastic milk bottles; t-t, stones, claves, quijada); str; solo marimba; solo timpani
‘Echo Band’: 2,1,2,2; 2,1,2,0; hp; 1 perc (small drum, bell, glass milk bottles, bowed cymbal)
Carrownagappul is inspired by peat bogs, and a week of fieldwork in July 2023 at Carrownagappul raised bog, Mountbellew, Co. Galway. Rebecca Teesdale, Regional Manager for National Parks and Wildlife Service, East Galway, met me and gave permission for me to bivouac on the bog for the week. Maura Hannon and the team at ‘Galway’s Living Bog’ Interpretative Centre, Mountbellew, were a great help, and provided a very welcome lunch at the centre!
I collaborated with Tina Claffey, Ireland’s premier photographer of bogs, wetlands and eskers, and author of Tapestry of Light (Letterfrack, Artisan House, 2017) and Portal (Dublin, Currach, 2022). Tina joined me for a day, and helped me to focus on the beauty beneath using a magnifying glass. She also shared her stunning macro-lens images.
Peat bogs are essential. The untouched ones are some of the last true wildernesses in Europe. Bogs account for c. 3% of the earth’s land, and store twice as much carbon as its trees. They rise at the rate of about 1 mm per year. To dig down 1 metre is to retrace a thousand years. In many ways, I think of bogs as wetland glaciers. Like glaciers, they preserve artefacts and wood (including ancient instruments) in remarkable condition, the ‘bog wood’ hard, like marimba keys. They are never still, always expanding or shrinking, and even moving quickly on a massive scale. Bog surface is delicately stretched over a resonant peat mass beneath. You walk on it as if on a mighty drum (on a ‘floating’ bog you can even jump and feel the whole land move). Bogs, like mighty ears to the heart of the land, are loud
with sound. The birdsong reverberates and the wind sings.
‘Echo Band’
The Echo Band sits apart from the main orchestra, or offstage. At the premiere, it was made up of alumni players. It could be a school/college/ community orchestra. The instrumentation and parts may also be adapted: for example, the most challenging passages (e.g. bb 218-224, 254-261) may be omitted. The exception is the percussion part which must be played as written, on the instruments specified.
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