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Dancing Light (1999)
for string orchestra
Ross Edwards
In 1999 the National Gallery of Australia asked me to provide a short musical
response to its latest major (and controversial) acquisition, David Hockney's
A Bigger Grand Canyon. The piece was to be performed by the Australian Chamber
Orchestra at an unveiling ceremony in the Gallery.
I couldn't hope, within the short duration allocated, to convey anything
of the scale of a painting which covers 60 canvasses; nor would it have
been possible to find a musical equivalent of Hockney's striking re-definition
of perspective. So I tried to celebrate the painting's astonishingly vivid
use of light and colour, and also a certain mysterious other-worldliness
I perceived in the reproduction sent me by the Gallery. Dancing Light is
a close-up view of the Grand Canyon which probes its recesses, finds rhythm
in its contours and imagines some trees in the lower right hand corner to
be full of vociferous birds. |