Program Notes:
Wayward Flicker reflects on mood/imagery, disintegration, memory and enlightenment through the blurring of timbre and the unfolding of time.
The text is comprised of excerpts from James Joyce’s short story, “The Dead.” All of Dubliners, but especially “The Dead,” employs the use of free indirect discourse as a narrative style, which is when the voice of a third-person narrator has begun to turn into a first-person narrator, that is one of the characters in the story. This literary shift between observation and embodiment is analogous to the three primary musical materials in Wayward Flicker.
- Three distinct sounds represent imagery from the text: breath (air), tears (keyclicks/slaps) and flickering (buzzing). These dissolve over the course of the piece.
- The Irish ballad, “The Lass of Aughrim” presents itself abstractly as a memory that gradually becomes more perceptible, therefore more real, as the piece progresses. The song tells a story of imperfection and fragility, heartbreak and death.
- The text is extracted from the final pages of “The Dead” and moves between spoken and sung words as the main character Gabriel reaches an epiphany which gradually takes him outside of his own thoughts and makes him view his partner and humanity in a new way.
https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1959875703&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true
Mara Gibson · Wayward Flicker (World Premiere), loadbang 11/5/24