The Centre Of Things (score) [digital download]

Description

The Centre Of Things is a song-cycle was composed by John Wallace between 2015 and 2019 for trumpet, tenor and piano on poems by Hugh MacDiarmid, Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley MacLean) and Ruaraidh MacThòmais.  It was first performed in its entirety by tenor Jamie MacDougall, pianist Marianna Abrahamyan with Bede Williams on trumpet on October 30 2024, at the MacPherson Recital Room of the Laidlaw Centre at the University of St Andrews.  The collection is now available to hear as part of a 2025 album release under The Wallace Collection label – The Centre Of Things (which includes Paul Mealor’s Five Bagatelles), recorded by Jamie MacDougall (tenor), Bede Williams (trumpet), Marianna Abrahamyan (piano).  This complete score is currently being offered as a FREE downloadable PDF in order to share the beauty and intrigue of these contrasting and emotive works.

COMPRISING:

1. In the Shetland Islands (Hugh MacDiarmid 1892-1978)
2. Shags’ Nests (Hugh MacDiarmid)
3. Ban-Ghàidheal / A Highland Woman (Sorley MacLean 1911-1996)
4. Am Bàta Dubh / The Black Boat (Sorley MacLean)
5. An t-Eilean / The Island (Sorley MacLean)
6. Leòdhas as t-Samhradh / Lewis in Summer (Ruaraidh MacThòmais 1921-2012)

PROGRAMME NOTES BY BEDE WILLIAMS:

The Centre Of Things
John Wallace (composer)
For trumpet, tenor and piano on poems by Hugh MacDiarmid, Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley MacLean) and Ruaraidh MacThòmais

In addition to his career as a trumpeter and cultural leader, John Wallace is also a composer. His postgraduate study in composition at the Royal Academy of Music and York University gave way to the allure of the trumpet only because it offered a way to make ends meet. John’s music, particularly in the later stage of his career, has covered the broad themes of place, people and memory. A self-described landscape composer, his music unashamedly connects to geographical specificness at an extramusical and aesthetic level. In doing so, much of his music is driven by rich human narratives and concerns. Like his own trumpet playing and leadership style, Wallace’s music also pushes boundaries, most notably in its expansiveness of scale and novelty of scoring. As a song cycle for trumpet, voice and keyboard accompaniment, The Centre of Things is perhaps only matched by Alessandro Scarlatti’s seven arias for trumpet, soprano and basso continuo. Extant repertoire for trumpet and voice is of course not in short supply, though secular songs are surprisingly scant and indeed none develop as a cycle.  As a work in Wallace’s output, it perhaps sits somewhere in-between (or as a third way) to the recently completed Symphony for Brass Band, and the trittico of operas: the music for the first of these operas, Opsnizing Dad, was premiered in the McPherson Recital Room by Jamie MacDougall and Bede Williams in 2022.

The title of the cycle is lifted from the first MacDiarmid setting in which the first lines read “I am no further from the ‘centre of things’ in the Shetlands here than in London, New York, or Tokyo”. Wallace’s association with the text goes back to his time as a new student in England and being nostalgic for Scotland. Wallace has commented ‘I didn’t have the courage to approach it because I’ve always been rather daunted by MacDiarmid’s intellect and the way that he covers all these different languages and places. It’s so universal and comprehensive of all humanity at the same time… but then I found the simplicity of Skye and it just gave me the idea that the way to present it was with a very simple backdrop and to let the words sort of speak for themselves.’

The second song, another MacDiarmid setting, equalises the story telling between the voice, trumpet and piano with all etching out melodic lines like the flight path of the birds around cliff faces. When asked about the influence of Scottish music on his compositional voice Wallace responded that his music doesn’t start sounding Scottish but sometimes ‘ends up modal with all these bagpipe doodles’. His process is to write fast and all at once and then add layers of complexity. The result often results in multiple layers of rhythmic and harmonic juxtapositions, perhaps like the Shags’ untidy nests built from similar but incongruent materials that are abundant in supply. The third song Ban-Ghàidheal also exemplifies this additive or maximalist compositional method. Independent sparse piano lines labour with a ‘talking trumpet’ (notes sung and played as multiphonics with a plunger mute) to create a bleak canvas in which the woman’s backbreaking existence of poverty come forth. For Wallace, MacLean’s poetry captures the extremities of civilisation. The second MacLean setting, Am Bàta Dubh, is a barcarolle in which the flow of the boat through the sea is effortlessly powered by wind. The tenor sings ‘mouth music’, Scottish vocal music that imitates or sets instrumental music.

An t-Eilean was the first to be composed in the cycle and is performed as the penultimate song: as the longest text it marks the apex of the cycle. The Escherian trumpet motif came to Wallace in a dream while at his daughter’s house in Skye and the piece is written for her (Skye was also where Wallace honeymooned with his wife Liz). It is dedicated to Tormod N MacGilliosa OBE, the first Principal of Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic College on Skye, who has done so much for the regeneration of the Island.  The text of Leòdhas as t-Samhradh was introduced to Wallace through an anthology of Scottish poetry gifted to him by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland when he retired as Principal in 2014: it simply followed on the next page from An t-Eilean. The music captures the languid atmosphere and utter stillness of those rare days in Lewis in which everything ‘hangs in the air like absolute perfection’ according to Wallace. The trumpet part adds sultriness, with the final moments asking the player to ‘soar into the distance’ in the way one may look at the sky on a hot summer’s day and be unsure as to whether they can trust what they’re seeing.

THE POEMS

In the Shetland Islands (Hugh MacDiarmid 1892-1978)

I am no further from the “centre of things”
In the Shetlands here than in London, New York, or Tokio,
No further from “the great warm heart of humanity,”
Or the “general good,” no less “central to human destiny,”
Sitting alone here enjoying life’s greatest good,
The pleasure of my own company,
Than if I were one with the crowds in the streets
In any of the great centres of population,
Or in a mile-long cinema queue, or a unit
In a two-hundred-thousand spectatorate
At Twickenham or Murrayfield or Ibrox
Or reading a selection of today’s newspapers
Rather than Keller’s Probleme der englischen Sprache und Kultur,
Or Heuser’s Die Kildare-Gedichte: die ältesten
mittel-englischen Denkmäler in anglo-irischer Überlieferung,
Or Esposito’s articles in Hermathena
On the Latin writers of mediaeval Ireland,
Or Curtis on The Spoken Languages
Of Mediaeval Ireland, or Heuser on the peculiar dialect
Of English spoken less than a hundred years ago
—Direct descendant of the language of the Kildare poems—
In the baronies of Forth and Bargy in County Wexford
And often (wrongly) described as a mainly Flemish speech.

The newspaper critic was talking rubbish, as usual,
When he made the shallow gibe, the fool reproach,
That in resuming his work in the Castle of Muzot
Rilke with all his insistence on Bejahung
“Could only praise life when protected from it.”
If personal participation were to be demanded,
Privacy forbidden, and any abstention
From any show of “life”—from any activity
Most people indulge in—construed
As a flight from reality, an insulation from Life,
All but the most rudimentary forms of life,
All but the “life” of the stupidest people,
Would speedily become impossible.

Rilke at Muzot or Duino was no more
“Protected from life” than any fool
At a street corner or in the House of Commons
Or in the columns of The Scotsman.
To be exclusively concerned with the highest forms of life
Is not to be less alive than “normal” people

Shags’ Nests (Hugh MacDiarmid)

Shags build their slatternly nests
On a ledge o’ a slot
In the rocky coast where they’re easily found
Frae below by a man in a boat

But they canna be seen frae abune
And in that remind me aince mair o’ the death-bound
Spirits o’men that climbin’
I’ve left behind me.

Ban-Ghàidheal / A Highland Woman (Sorley MacLean 1911-1996)

Hast Thou seen her, great Jew,
who art called the One Son of God?
Hast Thou seen on Thy way the like of her
labouring in the distant vineyard?

The load of fruits on her back,
a bitter sweat on brow and cheek,
and the clay basin heavy on the back
of her bent poor wretched head.

Thou hast not seen her, Son of the carpenter,
who art called the King of Glory,
among the rugged western shores
in the sweat of her food’s creel.

This Spring and last Spring
and every twenty Springs from the beginning,
she has carried the cold seaweed
for her children’s food and the castle’s reward.

And every twenty Autumns gone
she has lost the golden summer of her bloom,
and the Black Labour has ploughed the furrow
across the white smoothness of her forehead.

And Thy gentle church has spoken
about the lost state of her miserable soul,
and the unremitting toil has lowered
her body to a black peace in a grave.

And her time has gone like a black sludge
seeping through the thatch of a poor dwelling:
the hard Black Labour was her inheritance;
grey is her sleep tonight.

Am Bàta Dubh / The Black Boat (Sorley MacLean)

Black boat, perfect Greek,
sail tack, sail belly full and white,
and you yourself complete in craft,
silent, spirited, flawless;
your course smooth, sorrowless, unfeeling;
they were no more skilled black ships
that Odysseus sailed over from Ithaca,
or Clanranald over from Uist,
those on a wine-dark sea,
those on a grey-green brine.

An t-Eilean / The Island (Sorley MacLean)

You gave me the valuable enough
and some mettlesome talent,
struggle, danger and pleasant high spirits
on the rugged tops of the Cuillin,
and under me a jewel-like island,
love of my people, delight of their eyes;
the Seven and the rest in Portree,
exercise of brain and spirit, strife
of Skye camans on the river bught,
battle-joy, joyous company;
and the nights of Edinbane,
beauty, drink and poets’ novelties,
wit, satire, delight in full,
the Skye spirit at its height;
and nights on the slope of Lyndale,
the great Island with its many hills
lying in peace in the twilight,
grey-faced till the breaking of the sky.

O great Island, Island of my love,
many a night of them I fancied
the great ocean itself restless,
agitated with love of you
as you lay on the sea,
great beautiful bird of Scotland,
your supremely beautiful wings bent
about many-nooked Loch Bracadale,
your beautiful wings prostrate on the sea
from the Wild Stallion to the Aird of Sleat,
your joyous wings spread
about Loch Snizort and the world.

O great Island, my Island, my love,
many a night I lay stretched
by your side in that slumber
when the mist of twilight swathed you.
My love every leaflet of heather on you
from Rubha Hunish to Loch Slapin,
and every leaflet of bog-myrtle
from Stron Bhiornaill to the Garsven,
every tarn, stream and burn a joy
from Romisdale to Brae Eynort,
and even if I came in sight of Paradise,
what price its moon without Blaven?

Great Island, Island of my desire,
Island of my heart and wound,
it is not likely that the strife
and suffering of Braes will be seen requited
and it is not certain that the debts
of the Glendale Martyr will be seen made good;
there is no hope of your townships
rising high with gladness and laugher,
and your men are not expected
when America and France take them.

Pity the eye that sees on the ocean
the great dead bird of Scotland

Leòdhas as t-Samhradh / Lewis in Summer (Ruaraidh MacThòmais 1921-2012)

The atmosphere as clear,
translucent as though the veil had been rent
and the Creator were sitting
in His people’s full view
at potatoes and herring
with no one to whom
He could say a grace

Probably there’s no atmosphere
in the world that offers so little resistance to people
to look in at eternity
there’s no need for philosophy
where you can make do
with binoculars