Erik Chisholm

Programme Note

This extended work was composed between 1944 and 1951 and dedicated to the concert pianist Harold Rubens. It takes its inspiration from an anonymous Gaelic poem and uses a musical vocabulary which is strikingly dissimilar to the 'MacBartok' pieces in Chisholm's oeuvre. Indeed the very title of this piece brings to mind a world which is much more mystical for it virtually quotes from Szymanowski (Song of the Night), and in this sense clearly shows the influence of Chisholm's great friend, Sorabji.
The First Bard is constructed from a tightly knit melodic cello first heard at the bottom of the keyboard. Broodingly obsessive ostinatos give the movement a structure which eventually embraces louder dynamics in an a rch-like shape before fading into a more optimistic caedential epilogue. In Bard Number Two, the opening movement's melodic motif is expanded into a frightening tone poem. The whole range of the keyboard is saturated in sonority, though the central section is more disturbingly macabre. Chisholm is remarkbly concentrated and almost Brahmsian in his quest for compositional unity in this cycle of pieces. It is interesting to note the way in which these opening movements are related but contrasted. The Third Bard creates strikingly impressionistic effects within a filigree texture by virtue of delicate fingerwork and arpeggiated chords. The central cadenza passage with its bitonality and pentatonic scale is especially striking. Bard Four is a bravura tone poem which calls for much virtuosity and elan. The syncopated figure which dominates the sweeping arpeggiated runs of the piece adds defiance and resolution to the movement's characterisation. In complete contrast the Fifth Bard makes a transition from stasis to serenity. The rhythms are obsessively repeated, the colours gloomy and lugubrious. This is an elegy which lingers in the listerner's imagination, creating quasi-orchestral colours and an impressive sense of spaciousness. The Sixth Bard (subtitled 'Finale - The Chief') utilises ostinatos and arpeggiated chords below a striking chromatic motif which is extended towards a powerful climax. The work concludes, however, with a peaceful epilogue (marked pppp) in which the music disappears as though into the mist.
Murray McLachlan