Performed
at the banks of Dunbeath Water, the chamber opera Highland River, based on Neil
Gunn’s novel of the same name, portrays the young boy Kenn’s relation to the
river of his childhood. As a young boy, he prevails after a long struggle with
a salmon and his parents use the fish to pay off the family’s debts with the
local grocer. A few years later, his older brother Angus invites him to poach
salmon further upstream, an illegal act that could lead to repercussions from
the gamekeeper. As an adult, Kenn returns to the river of his childhood to
reflect on his childhood memories and the sense of place and time these embody.
The site-specific chamber opera Highland Rivertouches upon themes of physical and spiritual
growth and a deeply felt sense of place and time that Kenn’s childhood
experiences of salmon, the river and the wider landscape conjure up. Performed
in the open air, the voice of the baritone, clarinet, violin and cello will
merge with the rushing of the river and the whisper of the wind.
The
video beneath contains an extract from the opera from the first act. The young
boy Kenn’s mood changes abruptly when he spots a salmon in the river. For a
moment he is paralysed by fear of the gamekeeper, but soon his mind turns to
killing the fish and finding a stone. His confidence soon grows as he throws
stones at the salmon to disturb and catch it. The fish responds furiously and,
in first instance, Kenn dashes back. In a moment of reflection, he considers
how the salmon must have swum up the river. Kenn throws another stone at the
fish and manages to pull it on the grass. Using the full weight of his body,
Kenn eventually masters the fish and kills it. As the salmon dies, Kenn’s body
comes to a rest and he looks in wonder at the hands with which he managed to land
and kill the salmon.
Remembered
feeling, a term used by visual artist Marian Leven, describes the feelings a
place evokes in one’s memory. Pitcowdens, a composition for brass quintet, is
about the feelings and imaginations a forest croft in the northeast of Scotland
elicits for composer Petra Vergunst. For years she has visited the croft - as a
destination of walks, to plant trees and to study and share its history. Though
abandoned since the mid 20th century, the contours of the house, the
byre, the fields and the well are still visible in the landscape. For centuries
the farmer and his family and farmhands worked the land in daytime and played
the fiddle and sang bothy ballads at night. Pitcowdens is based on one of those
bothy ballads, The Dying Ploughboy. In this song, one of the farm workers feels his end is near and
says farewell to his master and the land he used to work. In a way, he bid
farewell to a way of life and working the land as farming retreated to the more
fertile lower-lying grounds along the river Dee half a century ago. To express
her remembered feelings and imaginations of the forest croft Petra Vergunst has
taken the first four notes of this ballad – the sequence of the tonic, mediant,
subdominant and dominant – as a motif to create a sense of longing, the rhythm
of working the fields, and more lyrical passages that allude to the bothy
ballad.
Alongside her work
as a freelance community musician, Petra Vergunst has studied music composition
with Patric Standford at the Open College of the Arts. Inspired by theatre,
performance art and poetry, her compositions often combine music with narrated
or sung texts. To reinforce the narrative character of her music she likes to
resemble musical utterances with spoken ones. Like thoughts, these utterances
then develop organically and are arranged in the form of monologue or dialogue.
A number of her compositions have been successful in competitions and
were performed professionally. Three (for alto flute), inspired by Elizabeth
Blackadder’s painting Still Life, January 1972, has been performed in Aberdeen
Art Gallery by Richard Craig during sound
2013. Pitcowdens (in an arrangement for flute, oboe, bassoon, horn in F and
cello) was shortlisted in a competition by the St. Andrews New Music Ensemble
and subsequently played by the ensemble in a workshop led by Sally Beamish.
Frozen River (flute, trumpet, cello) was played by The Red Note Ensemble during
Noisy Nights in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
Pitcowdens, in an arrangement for flute, oboe, horn in F, bassoon and cello, can be listened to here.
