Images, words and sounds

Many artists spend time in ‘the field’ to inspire their art. Be they painters, writers or musicians, the intimate experience and understanding of the place generated through spending time outdoors is essential for producing studio work. When the writer Robert Macfarlane and jazz musician Arnie Somogyi were asked to produce a performance piece for Orford Ness in Suffolk, the two artists spent days and nights in the nature reserve, keeping notes of images, phrases and other splinters of found language, jotting down sharts of melodies and half-heard harmonies. In doing so, they came to know the place by heart. As a result, the artists’s understanding of the nature reserve not only permeated the content of the performance piece but also informed its structure. What is interesting to me is that in their fieldwork Macfarlane and Somogyi tended to stick to their own medium, crossing the boundaries of their art forms primarily through collaboration. Though I am mainly a composer, I have a keen interest in writing and drawing. Producing images, words as well as sounds in fieldwork, I am currently exploring how doing fieldwork in more than one medium influences how I experience and understand a place.

Images, words and sounds help me to experience and understand a place in different ways. In his book The Perception of the Environment, anthropologist Tim Ingold argues that art gives form to human feeling. The way in which we express this human feeling is guided by our ‘specific orientations, dispositions and sensibilities that we have acquired through having had things pointed out to us’. From teachers and books, artists have learnt how to do fieldwork in their own discipline. I argue that our experience and understanding of the place is filtered through the medium we work in. When I did fieldwork at the ruined forest croft of Pitcowdens I not only tried to think in images, words and sounds, I also reflected on how each of these mediums influenced the way I came to experience and understand the place. 

I started my fieldwork at Pitcowdens with taking photographs that contained interesting movement and contrasting textures. There were also images that could serve as a peg through which I could tell the story of the forest croft – hollows in planks that shaped my view of the forest croft. Searching the site for interesting objects I realised that the objects I was looking for had to help me add a human dimensions to the generic story of a forest croft being abandoned. A twig structure resembling a washboard helped me conjure up images of women washing clothes. The stories, ideas and imaginations evoked through exploring images became the subject matter for some creative writing. In the process of finding the right words, the intangible amorphous images firmed up.  

There are composers who write music inspired by specific places, but fieldwork remains a less common phenomenon for musicians than it is for painters and writers. The routines for doing fieldwork are also less well established, leaving composers the opportunity to find out for themselves how they would like to develop their experience and understanding of place – and how this is to influence their music. For the performance piece for Orford Ness, jazz musician Arnie Somogyi wrote down snippets of melodies and harmonies that came to his mind whilst being in the reserve and produced music based on improvisation, composition and environmental sounds. On what he calls a song-walk along the river Deveron, musician Jake Williams collects images and songs native to the valley of the river Deveron, recording some of the songs on location. My own ideas for the composition Pitcowdens developed gradually, away from the ruined forest croft. The experiences and understandings generated through my fieldwork influence my musical ideas as well as the larger structure in which these were presented (compare the work of Sally Beamish). The images, words and sounds created during my fieldwork at the ruined forest croft, and the particular experiences and understandings of this place these brought about, have thus shaped my composition Pitcowdens.

As part of the community music project Burn of Sound  for Scottish Natural Heritage there will be an opportunity for people who enjoy the visual arts, writing and music to reflect on the kind of experiences and understandings of place they develop through fieldwork. The workshop,  a walk with creative writing exercises followed by a discussion, will take place on Saturday the 11^th of May from 2 to 4 pm at the visitor centre in the Muir of Dinnet National Nature Reserve. If you want to participate in this workshop, please send an email to Petra Vergunst at petravergunst@hotmail.com.

Copyright words and images Petra Vergunst

Pitcowdens

Holes left where branches once extended the trunk sideways

Shape our view

Of the forest croft

Then – a placed lived in

Now – reliving the place through our imagination

The image of holes in the planks of the bench once again takes me back to my experiences at Pitcowdens. By stepping a little bit to the left and to the right, the holes in the planks gave me different views of Pitcowdens. On my way back to the car, it gradually emerged to me that my favourite view would be imagining the ruined forest croft from the viewpoint of a bothy ballad. Bothy ballads, a kind of folk song traditional to North-East Scotland, are the songs that used to be sung by unmarried farm labourers. After browsing through several volumes of songs of life and love, I found The Dying Ploughboy. In a similar way as Marian Leven considers her pictures to express remembered feeling, I felt that this song captured the feelings Pitcowdens triggers for me.
 

In The Dying Ploughboy, one of the farmworkers feels his end is near and says farewell to his master and the land he used to work:

Fareweel my nags, my bonnie pair,

I'll never yoke and lowse ye mair,

Fareweel my ploo, wi you this hand,

Shall turn nae mair the fresh red land.

I have often felt that the ploughboy not only bids farewell to his master and the land, but ultimately also to a way of life and working the land. Before gamekeepers and forest workers lived at Pitcowdens, the croft was a farm. As farming gradually retreated to the more fertile, lower-lying grounds along the river Dee, the forest took over. In the end, the estate was handed over to Forestry Commission Scotland.
 

In Pitcowdens, a composition for flute, oboe, bassoon, horn and cello, I have tried to express some of the memories and imaginations conjured up by Pitcowdens. When the land around Pitcowdens was farmed, the farmer had farm helpers who would have sung bothy ballads like The Dying Ploughboy. I have taken the first four notes of this song – the sequence of the dominant, mediant, subdominant and dominant – as a motif to base Pitcowdens on. The opening bars, repeated several times, suggest my observation at Pitcowdens that ultimately gave rise to the series of feelings and imaginations in the composition. One may detect a sense of longing, the rhythm of working the fields, and a more lyrical scene that alludes to the bothy ballad. In the final scenes the different feelings and imaginations merge into a more rounded perspective.

I have written Pitcowdens as part of the project Said in Stone.

Below the composition:

Pitcowdens was shortlisted in a competition by the St. Andrews New Music Ensemble and played by the ensemble in a workshop with Sally Beamish.

 Copyright text and music Petra Vergunst

Burn of sound

Golden birch leaves rustle in the disappearing sun while 

silver drops scar the reflecting surface of the water.

The above words came to my mind when resting on a bench alongside a small lake an early autumn a few years ago. I used words to describe a nature experience and express my emotional response to it, perhaps even using my imagination to conjure up new experiences. Irrespective of the kind of experience I had and the words I used to capture it, the very act of writing has made the experience a memorable one. The creative activity has etched it in my mind.
 

The community music project Burn of Sound, commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage to celebrate the Year of Natural Scotland 2013, aims to use the creative activities of writing and singing to deepen the participants’ engagement with Muir of Dinnet National Nature Reserve. One cannot only capture nature experiences through the meaning of words, but also through the rhythm and sound of words. The meanings and musical qualities of words can be further enhanced if set to music. A selection of the material written by participants during creative experience workshops in the first part of the community music project will therefore be integrated in a series of rounds that will be sung with participants during singing workshops in the second half of the project. 

The project Burn of Sound will start with a series of creative experience walks that start from the Muir of Dinnet visitor centre – for schools on Monday 29 April and Wednesday 1 May and for families and  on Saturday 11 May from 10.30 am to 12 noon. During those walks participants will be encouraged to use the meaning, rhythm and sound of words to capture their nature experiences. Families will have an opportunity to sing the rounds based on the material written during the creative experience workshops at the Muir of Dinnet visitor centre on Saturday 15 June from 10.30 to 11.30 am, whereas local schools and community groups will be offered singing workshops in the week starting 17 June in schools and the venues where they usually gather.

Parallel to the work with schools, families and community groups, the community music project will provide an opportunity for local artists, writers and musicians to explore how they, in their creative practice, engage with their natural world and if their experience would be different if they engaged through a different art form. This creative experience workshop for artists will take place on Saturday 11 May from 2 to 4 pm. The subsequent singing workshop, in which there will be an opportunity for further reflection will be held on Saturday 15 June from 2.30 to 4 pm.

If you are a family, school, community group or artist interested in participating in the project, please contact community musician Petra Vergunst at petravergunst@hotmail.com. For more information about the project you can also contact Muir of Dinnet reserve manager Catriona Reid on Catriona.Reid@snh.gov.uk.

Other blogs on this project:
Images, words and sounds
I felt moss, I held water
Celebrate summer singing

Copyright text and image Petra Vergunst

Site-specific

One of the common threads in my community music practice is that the place that inspired the music is also the place where it is rehearsed and performed with participants. In the Warp and Weft project at Verdant Works, the music, inspired by the jute industry of Dundee, was rehearsed in a former mill. In Hear the Drum, a project with the National Trust for Scotland, the music inspired by the Tower of Drum was sung and acted out with school children in the castle earlier this week. 

In October, I participated in Out of the Box, a weekend of site-specific opera performed in lighthouses, horse stables, hotel apartments and pubs. Pippa Murhy’s opera Bolted, about the tension that may arise when a young woman loves her boyfriend as well as her horse, was performed in a stable. The ambiance and physical properties provided by the stable replaced the need for scenery and props that might have been needed if the opera had been performed in the more traditional opera setting of a theatre. Yet, the opera could have been performed in any stable. This is not to deny that the stable contributed significantly to the ambiance of the opera, but it was merely the physical properties of the space that did so, not the history and personal stories engrained in the place. In contrast, the site-specific music I compose for rehearsal and performance in my community music projects has this extended link to place. School children thus sung and acted out scenes that were inspired by the history and stories of the tower of Drum.

So what are the merits of engaging with music that is inspired by the physical properties, history and stories of the place in which it is rehearsed and performed? Mapping the Terrain, a book about new genre public art edited by Suzanne Lacy, opens with a picture of a women, obviously a passer-by, standing still to read some of the text that is being written on the pavement by artists. This image captures the essence of site-specific music as well: the creation of an experience for participants or the wider public that makes a place memorable. 

During the first two days of workshops with primary schools at Drum Castle this week, children left the room chatting about who would be King Robert the Bruce. During the lunch break, I heard some other children singing ‘Open the doors!’. Through the music of Drum I’ve been able to tell the story of how Drum became a place to be reckoned with. Through singing, talking about the historical events, and acting out the scenes, Drum Castle became a memorable place for the children.  

  Copyright text Petra Vergunst

Pictures taken by Laura Paterson (National Trust for Scotland)

Curves and hollows

Coming from the dense plantation, Pitcowdens opens itself up as a field scattered with broadleaved trees and stone structures. Owned by the Forestry Commission Scotland, it can only be approached on foot. Birdchatter and treefelling in the distance are the only sounds to break  the silence. When I volunteered for Friends of Durris Forests several years ago, I used to visit this abandoned forest croft regularly. Since then, the heritage project  has come of age. The tumbled down stones of the house and byre still lie where they used to be. I had forgotten about the wooden fence poles on the wall that used to border to garden. The treehut and willowhide are new and will certainly be a hit with my sons. Yet, it is a new bench that stops me in my track.

The bench might well have been a sculpture. The curves and hollows in the planks have Hepworth-like qualities. Held up by granite stones, I wonder about the symbolism of this structure. Wood and stone as the essence of a forest croft. At the same time I feel a sense of irony: are the planks really being supported by the stone? Once the croft was the home of farmers, gamekeepers and woodcutters, but as the it was abandoned in the middle of the 20^th century the link between the house and the woods was broken forever. 

When I sit down to write down my first impressions I realise that the bench is placed on a viewpoint. Against the backdrop of the plantation I can just about distinguish remnants of dykes in the distance. Once, Pitcowdens was an active farm where man and horse ploughed the fields. Archives show that the family who lived on the farm used to have a ploughboy. When I put down a cup of tea from my flask next to me I notice the rusted hook in the stone that flanks the seat on the right. What was the hook used for? Could the Clydesdale horses in the byre have been tied up to it overnight?

Though it is early March the sun has not come out and I feel the bitterly cold wind. I get up to see whether there are any objects that could help me tell the story of the abandoned croft. The forest school has left some branch structures that remind me of the kind of washboards that must have been used at Pitcowdens to wash clothes. When I return to the bench I take some pictures of the concentric patterns of cracks in the planks to inspire some abstract drawing. My eyes then fall on the views seen through the holes in the planks. Upright oval shaped, the hollows frame a narrow portion of the fields and plantation behind. I move a little bit to the left and right to find my favourite view. The holes in the planks seem to grow on me. Could it be that what I see when I visit Pitcowdens is only a small part of the stories that are written in the stones of the abandoned croft?

You can listen to the music inspired by my experiences of this heritage site at the blog Pitcowdens.

Copyright text and images Petra Vergunst

Said in stone

Neil M. Gunn’s novel Highland River tells the story of a northern river that is the pivot around which the central character’s Kenn’s physical and spiritual development resolves. On their way to poach salmon upstream the young Kenn and his older brother Angus pass the ruins of some old croft houses. Angus tells Kenn that the shallow hollows in the land at a little distance from each other show that the land has been cultivated and that the short white wall in the distance is a burying ground.

“The folk who lived here long ago. They lived in the ruins there, and in other ruins you’ll see. They poached the river many a time, I bet!” 

For Angus the abandoned croft houses evoked memories, enhanced by his imagination, of the people who inhabited the moorland in the past, and he passed this collective memory on to his younger brother. In his Foreword to the catalogue of Will MacLean’s Collected Works 1970-2010, Duncan MacMillan writes that memory is the moving part where time past and time present intersect. The old croft houses remind Angus of the people who lived there in the past, and the lives they lived. By imagining that these people must have poached salmon many a time just like the two brothers are about to do, these snapshots of collective memory gain renewed significance in the present. It seems as if the very stones of the abandoned site have messages written in them which can be deciphered by those who know how to read the landscape.

Stones lay scattered all across the Scottish landscape - ruined crofts, dykes, churches, bridges, stone circles. This year I intend to uncover some of the memories and imaginations such stones evoke through musical, visual and written media. Not only do I want to read some of the stories embodied in stone, I also want to develop my understanding of the way memory links past and present, and the way working across various arts disciplines can help me in this arts-led enquiry (see also my blogs Composition, Repetition, and Taking Inspiration from Sally Beamish). 

Expressing myself musically, visually and verbally will give me insight in the crossovers between the ways different forms of arts think about what they do and how they do it. In comparison to the visual arts and writing, music is often thought of as being an abstract art and therefore most suitable to appeal to people’s emotions and imagination. In his book The Music of Painting, Peter Vergo explains how this quality, as well as the structured approach of musical composition, appeals to many painters. As a composer of music my interest is in the reverse: how thinking visually and verbally can provide an extra dimension to music composition. 

As a student with the Open College of the Arts I've noticed that drawing and painting students keep sketchbooks in which they explore ideas on a regular basis, even if this does not feed directly into a drawing or painting they're working on. In contrast, composers seem to sketch mainly to feed into particular compositions. I want to borrow from the visual arts the idea of keeping a sketchbook to record my field work. My musical, visual, verbal and conceptual observations will all feed into my larger enquiry, and this in turn will provide context and inspiration, and hopefully some starting points for specific musical compositions.

For now, I’ll follow in the footsteps of Kenn and Angus, be it with camera and sketchbook in hand, to uncover some of the memories and imaginations the stones scattered across the landscape evoke.

Copryight text and image Petra Vergunst

Links to other blogs for the project Said in Stone:

Curves and hollows
Pitcowdens 
Images, words and sounds

Stifled flames

Frozen river

 A walk along the river in the midst of winter. The sun will soon disappear behind the hills. The air is thin. Upstream, deep snow covers the slopes towards the river. Here, footsteps have smoothened the snow on the river path. Still silence. No mid-register gurgling of the water that gives a glimpse of the inner voice of the river. Only when one tunes in to it, one hears the higher-pitched lisping of the ice. The strong current prevents the river from freezing over. Instead, ice crystals float on the currents. Underlying voices reveal themselves by continuously changing the ice crystal’s orientation on their journey downstream. Circles embedded in a line. 

 

The inspiration for Frozen River, a composition for glockenspiel. piano and cello, comes from one of composer Petra Vergunst’s many wintry walks along the river Dee in the Northeast of Scotland. She uses the glockenspiel and whole-tone scale to evoke the experience of the thin air on a cold mid-winter afternoon whilst the cello captures the voice of the river.  

Composer Petra Vergunst works as a community musician whilst studying Advanced Music with the Open College of the Arts. Interested in a wide range of environmental, social and cultural issues, and working across the arts, Petra often combines her musical compositions with narrated and/or sung texts to express the experiences and thoughts behind her compositions. To reinforce the narrative character of her music she likes to resemble her musical utterances with spoken ones, and arranges them in the form of a dialogue. Conscious choices of traditional key relations and/or atonal techniques, sometimes in combination, help her express underlying intentions.

In the arrangement for flute, trumpet and cello, Frozen Rover was played by The Red Note Ensemble at Noisy Nights in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. In an arrangement for glockenspiel, piano and cello, the composition came runner-up in a competition by the Open College of the Arts Student Association.

Copyright text and music Petra Vergunst