Iain Matheson

Programme Note

Kaleidoscope

When I was wee I had a kaleidoscope.
Its shifty shapes amazed me,
evoking strange and fabulous things.
I didn't know how it worked - magic, surely.

At school years later in a science class
we took a kaleidoscope apart.
Slim mirrors, crumbs of glass - nothing more.
Fascinating and appalling;
how could this reductionist jumble
add up to such magic?

Las year I bought another kaleidoscope.
All the old thrill came back as I peered into its one eye;
no less magical now that I know how the trick is done.

In the same way that my kaleidoscope makes pattersn,
this music creates patterns from fragments:
in fact just one fragment -
a single chord-shape heard from the different perspectives
of Brass, Woodwind, Strings.
One small piece of sound
manipulated in musical mirrors,
Repetition, Canon, Inversion;
celebrating the tricks time plays.

IGM

Notes

Written for Tim Paxton and the New Edinburgh Orchestra.