Performance of my piece, Ornaments of the Passing Night as part of the Oxford Chamber Music concert series, performed by Barnaby Burleigh (violin), Tom Carr (clarinet), and David Palmer (piano).

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This piece is intended as an exploration of the night sky of Bodø, Norway, on a night in October from 12am–8am.

The title of this piece is taken from a passage in a translation of Aratus’s Phenomena, one of the first written accounts on astral constellations. It is doubly relevant as it highlights the regularity of the asterisms’ appearance within the piece.

The material of this work is achieved through a tracing of constellations from Bodø’s starscape into uniform bars, which generated pitch and rhythmic cells. In many places, this cell dictates the character of the passage. Over the course of the ‘night’, the constellations rotate, and motivic variations are created due to the graphical difference in their shape.

As the skyscape taken was of Bodø in Norway, the piece also alludes to the presence of the Northern Lights, in the swelling sound of intervallically saturated chords in the piano.

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All these constellations thou canst mark as the seasons pass, each returning at its appointed time: for all are unchangingly and firmly fixed in the heavens to be the ornaments of the passing night.

–      Aratus, Phenomena, line 451