Night
Item
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Score title
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Night
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Composer
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Judith Weir
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Program note
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1. Night Menagerie
2. Night Anxiety
3. Late Night Radio
My violin-cello duo Night (originally developed in workshops with Alice Rickards and Sonia Cromarty) was written for a late evening concert using lighting design to explore aspects of life in the dark. Our starting point was that of nocturnal creatures, who have highly developed senses of eyesight and hearing. All the music is very quiet; there's the idea that just as we strain to see in the dark, our hearing also expands at night-time, allowing us to hear quieter sounds which we might ignore in the day when our more prevalent visual sense takes over.
'Night Menagerie' was inspired by tiny perceptions of human physiology (for instance, blood audibly racing) and nature – a flying insect and the first bird sounds just before dawn, distantly apprehended. The content of 'Night Anxiety' is self-explanatory; an evocation of how inner thoughts and turmoil also expand in the dark. 'Late Night Radio' is a more relaxed night-time phase, the minutes leading into sleep, when external noises (recorded music playing quietly in the distance, and the gentle rumble of an underground train) merge into a comfortable blur.
J.W.
Judith Weir