Martin Dalby

Programme Note

The Mary Bean, commissioned by the BBC in celebration of the Royal Scottish (formerly Scottish National) Orchestra's centenary, is the fourth work by Martin Dalby to be featured in the Proms. The inspiration for what the composer has described as this `quite big concert overture' has Ñ as so often with Dalby Ñ a literary source, in this case David Thomson's book The People of the Sea, with its references to the Mary or Molucca bean, which is carried by the Gulf Stream from Caribbean shores to those of Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles of Scotland.
It seemed, says Dalby, a nice idea to use this talisman as an omen of good fortune for the RSO during its next hundred years, and as a symbol of `other good things which have arrived in Scotland' But the piece's Caribbean connections also include Jean Rhys's novel The Wide Sargasso Sea, from which Dalby once drew some lines for a scena entitled Antoinette Alone. The folk-song-like nature of this music reappears in the form of an extended oboe solo, seventeen bars long, at the start of The Mary Bean's slow central section.
The outer sections, however, are fast, the first of them consisting (in the composer's words) of `seven minutes of energy' depicting perhaps the relentless motion of the sea. The material employed here incorporates an offbeat rhythm featuring the flutes, and an important six-note motif (A, G sharp, A, A sharp, B C sharp), the intervals of which recur throughout the piece.
With a reduction of speed and a clearing of texture comes the oboe's expressive Jean Rhys evocation, an adaptation by Dalby of his setting for voice and piano of Rhys's words, `Queen of the silent night / shine bright, shine bright / Robin as you die'. But lurking in the music of this central section there is a further quotation, this time from an old Celtic plainchant in praise of St Columba, with the rhythm of the final Latin word `Benedictus', high-lighted on the strings.
Though the recapitulation and coda bring back the vigorous sweep of the opening section, the overall mood of the piece, declares Dalby, is `benign and optimistic'. The scoring is for triple woodwind (including piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet and double bassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, percussion (three players) and strings. The Mary Bean is dedicated to the RSO.
© Copyright 1991 by Conrad Wilson.0