“… a very special experience – you feel you are part of an ancient spiritual world” Robert Bunting
There are places – ordinary, everyday places we may pass many times without registering anything in particular. They are not particularly attractive but nevertheless have a strange beauty. These are places which often have a sort of sombre tranquility – places which can evoke powerful, unspoken dramas. In certain lights and at certain times, these are places which may trigger deep and long forgotten half memories.
This music is intended to take you to these places and provide you with space and time to reflect on their special and strange beauty.
SB1 An image of tranquillity
… a dark, damp decaying back yard which nevertheless has an atmosphere – and at certain times of year, and in certain lights, a strange beauty.
SB2 Blacka Moor
The picture shows three trees and a railway tunnel chimney on Blacka Moor near Sheffield. The music explores their respective underground ‘networks’.
The railway tunnel is part of an obvious network – in this case providing a transport link between Sheffield and Manchester.
In the case of trees, recent theories suggest that trees often make use of what are referred to as mycorrhizal networks. The fine, hairlike root tips of trees join together with microscopic fungal filaments to form the basic links of the network, which appears to operate as a symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi. The fungi draw nutrients from the trees – in exchange for providing groups of trees with communication networks, which trees can use to ‘support ‘ one another.
So the music considers these very different types of network which exist alongside each other. One is mysterious, timeless and silent – the other bustling and noisy.
SB3 The Beech Tree
In a wood beside a path there stands an old beech tree. The trunk is thick, the bark is scarred but the branches continue to reach upwards flowing gracefully into the sky.
Look more closely at the scars on the tree and you realise these are initials carved by young people many decades ago. Where are they now? Do they still walk this way? Do they age with dignity and grace … as does this tree?
SB4 – Stone Steps
They connected two cultures – at the top of the hill some farms and scattered workmen’s cottages and in the valley the river and railway line. They now connect a suburb with a city. A few commuters, shoppers and school children still use these steps; they are now often silent. But they still have stories to tell.
david ashworth 