Eidyllion for Orchestra

Program note: The word “idyll” is from the Greek eidyllion, ‘“little picture’, a short poem of a pastoral or rural character in which something of the element of landscape is depicted or suggested.” I wanted to write a work that was predominantly bucolic and soothing in affect, in response to the precarity and volatility of the current times. For the majority of the piece, which is in one continuous movement, my pastoral scene is an interior imagining: it takes place in the mind, rather than in response to any specific pictorial tableau. However, there is part of Eydillion that does recall an actual place. The middle section is an elaborated quote from my Bundanon Sonata for Violin and Piano (2011) – the fourth movement, “Earth Art Could Fall From the Skies”. I composed this work on my fourth Artist Residency at Bundanon, bequeathed to the nation by the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd estate, situated near Nowra, NSW. This movement refers to the plethora of contemporary site-specific artworks around the vast property, not only on the ground but also up in the trees. The opening theme of Eydillion returns in various guises, one of which affords an obligato piano moment in the spotlight. I wanted to give the sense of travelling through this interior “journey”, with time unfolding, terrain – of a non-specified nature – traversed. A triumphant, ecstatic end is presented by the orchestra, in tutti.