Elegy 1 : Time Present is Time Past
2021

Composed during the Covid lockdowns, Elegy 1 uses sound recorded around the city of Wells in Somerset, prior to the pandemic. These include the twelfth century cathedral clock, the cathedral bells and a domestic garden. Thus traces of memory and the past mingle with a disturbing present in a composition which, like English poetry’s elegiac tradition, is haunted by passing time and mortality.
Bells sound throughout the composition, striking the passing of time, tolling the passing of life and forming the material of a substantial bell fantasia section, where the sounds of bells manipulated in various ways form an imaginative response to the silenced bells of the pandemic and the Second World War. Finally, the bells are heard in the distance, mingling with the sounds of a domestic garden located above the city.