From the recording The Intelligence of Rocks
The opening line is from Auden’s ‘Musée de Beaux Arts’, where the poet suggests that although the fall of Icarus might have been very significant for him, for those engaged in ordinary life, the event didn’t even register. The rocks strongly resemble aerial photos taken over Hiroshima after the blast. The tragedy remains almost private: there’s nobody left to see it and if there were, signs have been erected to exclude the prurient. Taking Wilfred Owen’s line ‘…the poetry is in the pity.’ I have attempted to construct an accompanying musical distillation of pity. The language is Mozartian, even if the piece extends beyond pastiche or parody, since in his slow movement melodies Mozart pretty well defines how human pity can be encoded.