Program note: Stephen Adams' "memory pieces"
- by Stephen Adams
memory pieces is very much a personal exploration of memory using the associations and interconnections of Walwicz’s text. The composer hopes this reading and the following ‘explanation’ will not detract from the text’s ambiguities and the possibility of a wide range of interpretive responses to both the words and the music:
prelude | obelisk |
i | four buildings as windows to the past, and the process of their being torn down, whether physically or through the overlappings and disintegration of memories |
ii | memory as an act of summoning and as invention or ‘reconstruction’ of the past from a ragbag of images and assocations to suit the teller. In between we revisit a castle from the past, blurring childhood throughts with images of wartime and the tourist experience |
iii | drawn to painful early memories that refuse to be forgotten, we try to cope through acts of playfulness such as the act of writing, as the blinds roll down |
Stephen Adams 1995