Description

Marc Yeats: Out of the Dead Land (2014)

For solo acoustic guitar. Duration circa 12-14 minutes.

Computer typeset score (17 pp)

This is not a programatic work. I was drawn to the partial phrase ‘out of the dead land’* as an indicator of renewal, invention, bringing forth something from nothing. Even this isn’t true of the piece; the music was not born from ‘nothing’- it was a transduction of ‘streaming’ for Kingma System quartertone alto flute. Indeed, the finished work has moved some way from its genetic ‘bedrock’, but the underlying interplay of four quavers set above a quintuplet of five quavers in the bar is a direct inheritance from said piece. Coupled with the intricacies of grace notes, extreme gestures and colour, it over much of its exuberance and density to its forbear.

Marc Yeats: July 2014

*T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land 1922