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Morning Drunk and Buzzard
Morning Drunk and Buzzard was a work I had been wanting to write for a number of years, ever since the St.Magnus Festival in 1990. I had been invited to the festival that year to hear performances of my First String Quartet – Civil Disobedience on the Northern Front, a work I had written in Hoy Kirk during many nights the previous year.
After a concert at the Festival in 1990 – I think it was Philip Glass’ “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Max was drinking whiskey from a flask – I, along with everyone else who had been at the concert, it seemed, ended up at a ceilidh at the Stromness Hotel.
Suffice to say drink followed drink and I was particularly well oiled by the time I decided it was time to call it a night ( or perhaps it was the hotel management that decided it for me – I cant really remember).
“Calling it a night” is a phrase that doesn’t appear to mean much in the Orkney summers, it seemed to me, such was my drunken confusion leaving the hotel in what seemed bright midday sunlight ( it was 3.a.m).
Anyway, I had a long trek in front of me, back to the house of a lovely family who treated me wonderfully as a guest up at the back of Stromness.
During my walk , albeit in a slightly staggering fashion, back through the light drenched countryside I noticed a bird that was not going away. I gradually began to convince myself that this bird, some kind of bird of prey, was escorting, or perhaps pursuing me back to the house. The bird was almost certainly not a buzzard – they are very rare in the Orkneys- however at that moment the bird was a buzzard to me and my mind was swimming with notes, alcohol and the sounds of Orkney that Peter Maxwell Davies so uniquely produces in his chamber orchestral works.
The music of Max has always brought to my mind the topography of the Orkneys in a way that has happened only once before to me , when I stood on the shores of Aldeburgh (don’t get me started on the War Requiem)
I process music very slowly and the beginning of this work, started that night, had been waiting in my head for the past twelve years.
Although the work does follow the story above , from me leaving the hotel, becoming caught up with the imagery of my drunken self, the bird and the winds around me all the way back to my cosy bed – the work could be looked upon as still life, a reaction to all this mixed up drunken imagery in an unapologetic Tam O’Shanter fashion.
The work is dedicated to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
It was commissioned by the St.Magnus Festival with a financial subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council and is about twelve minutes long.
Instrumentation
2.2.2.2/2.2.0.0/timps/8.8.4.4.2
First Performance
Scottish Chamber Orchestra Pickahouy Centre Kirkwall 2002