Tuesday 7th June 8.30pm, Cottier's Theatre
Aidan O'Rourke writes:
Tuesday will see the première of my solo violin composition Opticks, inspired by the
stained glass artist Daniel Cottier
and performed by Alexander
Janiczek with electronic collaboration from Ela Orleans.
It will be performed at Cottiers Theatre,
Glasgow at 8.30pm on 7th June as part of The Cottier Chamber
Project.
It is my first full solo instrument composition. I have written plenty
of tunes, generally intended for me or my bands to play, but this was a
completely different job and the writing is a much inspired by Bartók
and Pärt
as it is my folk background. Both of these composers drew on elements of folk
music (who doesn’t) so perhaps my own little circle is partly complete here.
More circles a little later.
A little on Daniel Cottier (mainly stolen from Wikipedia):
Daniel Cottier was born in Anderson, Glasgow in 1837. Anderson was then
a rural town separate to Glasgow with a population of around 12,000. Cottier
trained as an apprentice with two glazing and decorating firms; the second
being John Cairney and Co through which Cottier would have come into contact
with the genius Alexander ‘Greek’ Thompson. Thompson was a holistic designer
and included furniture, carpets and coloured decoration in his building designs.
This must have greatly influenced a young Daniel Cottier.
Cottier moved first to Edinburgh then to London around 1857 which
brought him close to William Morris (and his developing colour theories), the Pre-Raphaelites
and the dawn of the Aesthetic
Movement. Cottier returned to Scotland in 1862 with a deep
understanding of colour harmony and opened his own business in Edinburgh in
1864 aged only 26.
He moved his company to London in 1869 where he developed an interest in
international art dealing. This brought him into contact with Vincent Van Gogh
who visited Cottier’s London showroom in 1876 and was very complimentary of his
work.
Cottier was heavily responsible for establishing the Aesthetic Movement
in America and opened his New York branch in 1873. While there he collaborated
with Louis Comfort
Tiffany and John_La_Farge.
He also expanded to Australia and made four trips there between 1873 and 1890.
Daniel Cottier emerges as a key figure in the Aesthetic Movement in the
UK mostly for his stained glass-painting but he was an equally talented
colourist and ornamentalist and his many commissioned works testify his
position among avant-garde London design circles on the 1870s.
He died in 1891, aged 53, of a heart attack while in Jacksonville,
Florida. His firm survived in New York until 1915.
Andy Saunders at The Cottier Chamber Project asked me to write this
piece on the evening I heard the most mind-blowing of acoustic performances, James Ehnes and Steven Osborne performing Beethoven and
Brahms.
I was in an innovative juxtaposition for weeks after this performance.
Deep in a kind of creative quagmire/glow, doubting my own abilities as a
performer (normal)/while also reveling in the possibilities of writing for a
virtuosic classical violinist. It wasn’t intended, but writing this piece made
me question my place as a musician, my limitations versus my musicality. The
music I’ve written is at times out of my technical reach but I’ve come to terms
with that. I’ve come out of the process more confident in the way I play and in
the way I write. All good so far, back to the music.
In writing this I visited Cottier Theatre (Old Dowanhill Church) a few
times, absorbing the beautiful windows and playing and recording some
improvisations in the space. I took photos of the windows and some of the
restoration of Cottier’s decorative paintings, printed them out and covered the
windows of my south facing room with them. The fine lines and angles were
inspiration in themselves, but Cottier’s colour harmony added the extra glow
which struck the same endorphin-ey areas of my brain that are triggered when I
write about landscape.
I would waken each morning to these images and the music flowed. One
process I always follow was taken from Japanese author Haruki Murakami and that’s to always end
the day on the crest of a good idea, which sometimes means finishing earlier
than intended or (usually the case) much later.
I researched the theories of colour harmony
and came up with some writing processes.
There are 12 colours in the colour wheel. I substituted the colours for 12 notes and followed the basic colour chords to generate musical patterns. They looked like this:
One of the most consistent sources of inspiration was that I was writing
for Alexander whose playing I find so beautiful, lyrical and delicate, yet
powerful and so characterful. This was in my mind through the whole process.
I wanted an electro-acoustic element in this piece for a few reasons:
• I thought that a visit to a stained glass studio would provide
fantastic source material
• I love collaborating
• I thought the space, the acoustics, Alexander’s playing and the
inspiration would suit electronic input
• I love Ela’s sense of space and her general sound aesthetic and wanted
to work with her
Ela and I visited the stained glass studio at the Glasgow School of Art
and recorded Eilidh Keith at work in her studio. Ela has used this source
material as well as samples of my own playing within the piece.
This is Saturday afternoon and I’m trundling north in a van with my trio
Lau. I have a rehearsal with Ela tomorrow
then a final play through with Alexander on Monday. I’m very excited about how
it will sound on Tuesday.
