Birdsong Bagatelles

This, my fifth string quartet, was commissioned by the Coull Quartet through funding provided by The University of Warwick, where it was premièred in June 2002. The work comprises a series of twenty-four 'micro-movements', each lasting no more than a minute or so and being a 'sonic portrait' of one of twenty-four common British birds. The subject for the work originated in my inaugural artist-in-residence with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) from 2002-2005.

I had already published a book, 'Birds Talk'(Minerva Press, London, 2001) and the 'subjects' for each movement mirror those in the book. In addition to my work as a composer and visual artist, I am also an active and published ornithologist. However, this quartet does not concern itself with Messiaen-like transcriptions of bird songs; rather, the bird songs locate the music in a kind of sonic habitat directly inspired by re-conceiving landscape features and dynamics as musical forms.