Piano Sonata (2024)
"Vesper Flights"

for solo piano

approx. duration: 18 minutes

composed for Piers Lane

i -   over white cloud suspended

ii -  of unknowing knows

iii - on the twilit horizon

Each of the three movements which comprise this sonata draw profound inspiration from Helen Macdonald's essay ‘Vesper Flights.’ The essay is a beautiful, moving homage to swifts, depicting their ‘vesper’ flights at dusk, where the birds ascend to astonishing heights, reaching at least 8,000 feet, circling ever higher as day turns to night. Each movement is associated with notions of atmosphere, air, ether and the empyrean, mirroring the birds’ journeys into the afterglow of crepuscular skies. The first movement, ‘over white cloud suspended,’ is aerial in its methods and material, gently drifting through diaphanous changes in tonality, invoking a sense of being suspended among the clouds. The second, ‘of unknown knowns,’ is more restless and elusive, flitting nervously between fluttering ideas, rarely settled in one place. The final movement, ‘on the twilit horizon,’ represents a point of arrival within the musical logic of the sonata. It speaks to the awe-inspiring majesty of these birds; their extraordinary power and mystery, described by Macdonald as ‘magical in the manner of al things that exist just a little beyond understanding.’