Joe Stollery

This piece is based on the painting of the same name by Campbell Lindsay Smith (1901), which itself is based on an old ballad about two ravens discussing what to do with a dead knight they have just found. Encountering the painting in Aberdeen Art Gallery with the ballad printed next to it, I found myself captivated by the macabre tone of both media and the connections to each other. I wanted to add a third musical medium, creating a triptych of music, painting and poetry.

The music follows the story of the ballad closely. It begins with the ravens settling down next to the dead knight. They strike up a conversation, discussing his fate and the loss of those faithful to him, such as his hawk, who flew off in search of more carrion, and his wife who took another lover. They finally begin eating his corpse. For the most part, the music is atonal, although there are many attempts to establish a tonality.

The piece is scored for alto flute (doubling flute) and bass clarinet. These two instruments represent each bird and the outer sections of the piece take the form of a musical dialogue. There are also leitmotivs to represent the knight’s horse, his raven, his hunting dog, and a fanfare to mark his heroism, all twisted to suit the dark tone of the subject matter. The instruments have certain characteristics, the bass clarinet being more impetuous than the cautious alto flute. However, these instruments take on a more theatrical role in the middle section, which takes the form of an ironic love duet between the late knight and his wife.  The aforementioned leitmotivs are incorporated within the duet, and at the end of this section, in a mockery of heightening emotion, there is even a suggestion of the ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, which soon collapses back into the atonality of the ravens’ dialogue.

In the last section, the ravens finally decide to eat the corpse, and the music becomes almost aleatoric as the ravens’ pecks are depicted in a sinister fashion as quiet staccato notes. The piece ends with a breathless noise from the alto flute in reference to the final lines of the ballad: ‘Oer his white banes, when they are bare,/The wind sall blaw for evermair’.

This piece was composed for the ‘Painting with Sound’ event as part of the sound festival 2013.

PERFORMANCES:

Première: 29 October 2013 - Aberdeen Art Gallery - Richard Craig (flutes) and Joanna Nicholson (bass clarinet)

21 May 2023 - Aberdeen Art Gallery - CAtherine O’Rourke (flutes) and Joanna Nicholson (bass clarinet)