The Thought-Fox was inspired by a poem of the same name by Ted Hugheshttps://www.twine.net/signin). Hughes brilliantly paints a picture of a fox lurking in the dark forest and at the same time, represents the process of an idea materialising overtime as the writer fills the blank page before him.
My composition draws from the vivid imagery in this poem, and attempts to give a sonic representation of this fox in the dark forest. The motif is first presented in fragments before slowly taking shape over the course of the piece.
(Many thanks to the students and alumni of the Royal College of Music London, and Conductor Jonathan Cole for performing my piece!)
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
music instrumental chamber poetry literature programmaticmusic contemporary classical…The Thought-Fox was inspired by a poem of the same name by Ted Hugheshttps://www.twine.net/signin). Hughes brilliantly paints a picture of a fox lurking in the dark forest and at the same time, represents the process of an idea materialising overtime as the writer fills the blank page before him.
My composition draws from the vivid imagery in this poem, and attempts to give a sonic representation of this fox in the dark forest. The motif is first presented in fragments before slowly taking shape over the course of the piece.
(Many thanks to the students and alumni of the Royal College of Music London, and Conductor Jonathan Cole for performing my piece!)
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
music instrumental chamber poetry literature programmaticmusic contemporary classicalWW…