Anthony Payne

1940's Childhood

Anthony Payne: 'As a passionate Elgarian for most of my musical life, I was fascinated by the prospect of writing something which reflected or somehow incorporated his Memorial Chimes written for the Loughborough Carillon, a piece, moreover, which I did not know, although I pride myself on an intimate acquaintance with the greater part of his output. My own style is a far cry from that of the English late-romantics which I so love, but I have recently discovered how to relate to their music in more than just spiritual and emotional particulars, and in Spring's Shining Wake I produced a gloss of Delius' In a Summer Garden, finding equivalents in my vocabulary for each of that work's procedures, somethings approaching the original closely and sometimes shadowing it from afar. p>When I saw the Elgar I immediately realised that this kind of approach was out of the question. For one thing it is quite a short piece and frankly it is not one of the master's great inspirations. It does, however, possess one characteristically haunting phrase, and I saw how I could draw it within my own harmonic and textural orbit, not the sort of idea to base a work on, but a happy little discovery such as one often makes during the course of composing a work.

I accordingly set out to write a short tone poem which somehow draws together the sonorous 'objets trouvés' which float into the mind during intense contemplation of a still landscape, memories of the past (the Elgar), intimations of magic in the wind, sudden intense perceptions of the cosmic forces of which we form such an insignificant part, ominous vibrations borne on the air from some other existence.