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I wanted to use large ensemble for this but also wanted to work with voice. So I decided to write for Lore Lixenberg - a fantastic musician - and large ensemble. All of my pieces for voice are written using an interesting methodology, where the words are written in tandem with the music by my usual collaborator, Harry Ross. This is the fourth piece we have collaborated on. Sometimes I write the music before the words, sometimes the words are written before the music. I’m aware that my music should completely relate to the accent or vowel sounds of the words for this to happen. So, for instance, I tell Harry to write with this or that emotion in a particular section, but he has to choose a word that starts with a consonant because I have an accent there. And I want vowel sounds where I have no accent. The piece has five continuous sections, and Lore sings from five different positions on the stage. I used different composition techniques for each section - which reflects the woman’s various thoughts. A text always has a subtext, but we discussed the aural framework before either of us knew what the piece was going to be about. The structure came before the notes and words. The five sections reflect the different emotions of the character. At the root of the music and the text is an enquiry about what happens to sound when particles of meaning – movement, words, ideas - are enmeshed within a sonic framework. I’d like to think that the result, the audience’s experience, has a strength and solidity which is as definite and weightless as the structure of a particle or an atom. Edited from Dai Fujikura's conversation with Harry Ross |