Iain Matheson

Programme Note

`And, as imagination bodies forth
The form of things unseen, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to Airy Nothing
A local habitation and a name'. (Midsummer Night's Dream V/i)

Fantasy and fabrication in tandem, teaming up to make something out of nothing; Shakespeare's account is as accurate for composers as for poets. This piece gives a local habitation and a name to a number of `things unseen' - airy nothings whose only hint of substance is in imagined rhythms and intervals and textures. The ensemble enlarges on suggestions made by a soloist - usually a viola - throughout the work, and in doing so visits many of the performance techniques more or less unique to strings - harmonics, glissandi, tremolo, etc.