专辑简介

Subtitled a ‘plainsong for undachin tarhu (plus halo)’, Some Shade of Blue is a slow song-like solo set over a resonant aura provided by electronic means. The work was originally written for a newly designed string-instrument by Peter Biffin, the undachin tarhu and a detuned vibraphone. This recording, however, is an adapted version of the work for violin combined with electronics realised together with composer Marcus Whale.

Some Shade of Blue is a microtonal work based on a 19-notes-per-octave just intonation system proposed by Kraig Grady and Terumi Narushima. The metaphor of colour is associated with the evolving and growing palette of intervals heard as the work unfolds. The slow intense ascent of the melodic line shadows the violin solo in the final movement of the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen: a composer whose use of pitch is intrinsically tied up with colour (‘synesthetically’ so). The colour blue is often used to symbolise eternity, the end-point for Messiaen’s quartet. The colour is also used to describe the subtle flattening of notes in Jazz and Blues music. Although I do not seek to directly evoke such musical traditions, the idea of the “blue note” – a note of heightened expressive potential lying between the cracks of the piano – is of poignant relevance. The title is also a loose play on David Hume’s “Missing Shade of Blue”: a philosophical proposition concerning the capacity of the mind to project an idea without being exposed to the relevant sensory experience (Is it possible to imagine a shade of blue that you have never seen?). The question similarly can be applied to musical situations such as our perception of pitch and has been a point of contemplation for me reconciling my theoretical understanding of microtonal tuning theories with my perceptual experience of previously unheard notes and intervals. (DR)