Thomas Metcalf - Piano Works

Описание: A concert of my piano music performed by David Palmer at the Reid Concert Hall, Edinburgh, supported by The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.

Ennui(t) (00:20)
This piece uses a similar approach to another recent work, Crow Forms (2022) for horn trio, and should be seen as part of a series of pieces which derive material using Ted Hughes’ From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1970). Ennui(t) uses the poem Crow Frowns as its generator, and is an expression of both the emotion and feeling of ennui (boredom, listlessness, frustration) seen through the exploration of clusters in the piano, contrasting with more lyrical (yet febrile) linear material. This contrast alludes to the wordplay of the title, ennui / en nuit (at night), but these two images do often coincide in reality.

Conditional (06:00)
This is my earliest acknowledged work, and demonstrates the beginnings of a process that has come to define many other pieces: the use of limitations and simple algorithmic processes. An initial melody is slowly revealed, controlled by a cycle of harmonic oscillations between two chords which get increasingly shorter. The middle section provides a contrast, presenting more lyrical and free material derived from the opening, before the two approaches are combined towards the end with a final overlapping of the two harmonic centres (G and A-flat) causing a break in the rules and thus the end of the piece.

Disintegrated Bones (12:00)
This is a fully graphic score, with no traditional notations provided. Rather, the pianist is presented with a series of varyingly pixelated versions of the first page of Arrays with directions suggested on how to interpret them. The pages are shuffled beforehand, and can be arranged in either portrait or landscape orientation. Each page must last a similar amount of time, and this duration is determined by how fast the pianist can play page 1 of the score in a convincing manner. As such, the duration of Disintegrated Bones is variable: it can take anywhere between approximately 3.5 and 6.5 minutes. The title of this work is taken from Pablo Neruda’s The Book of Questions (1973):

What will your disintegrated bones do,
search once more for your form?

Melody for Elodie (18:55)
This short, calm piece was written as a gift to celebrate the birth of my friends’ daughter, Elodie, in May 2022. Elodie’s mother was always keen on learning the piano, and as such I designed the piece such that the left hand could be played by a beginner – enabling the mother to play the melody to the daughter.

Arrays (22:10)
This work that explores how a varyingly pixelated text can be used to create musical structure and material. The piece exists in five movements, one for each line of the text (reprinted below), that explore different ways in which one may interpret the ‘pixel arrays’ that are generated through pixelation, thus creating a playful interpretation of what ‘word-setting’ really entails. Characteristics such as pulse, rhythm, and density are linked to the visual representation, with elements of randomness used to create macro–structures and pitch sets.


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