Abstract
The initial idea for this set of pieces came from Peter Blake’s cover design for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album. Blake’s iconic image juxtaposes sixty-one seemingly unrelated public figures – from Marilyn Monroe to Albert Einstein, from Lewis Carroll to Bob Dylan. The five cameos that make up Looking Glass Ties are re-workings of existing pieces displayed in a new light and from a different perspective – pieces through the looking glass. There are abrupt stylistic changes between movements and the degree to which the borrowed material is transformed varies greatly from piece to piece. Some Like it Hot, originally taken from a short cue from Bernard Herrmann’s score to Truffaut’s film Fahrenheit 451, becomes completely buried by other references. Conversely, Sonata K.25 is simply a transcription of a complete Scarlatti sonata, transformed only by the addition of a few extra notes and the instruction to perform it in the manner of Mikhail Pletnev’s highly Romantic recording from 1995. In this Style 10/6 refers to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland, the music being a highly distorted version of Erik Satie’s setting of René Chalupt’s poem Le Chapelier. Morton Feldman’s viola in my life 3 provides the rhythmic template for invisible starfall and Late Music is constructed from fragments of two pieces written towards the end of composers’ lives – Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony and Beethoven’s string quartet Op. 132. My concern is not that an audience recognises the various references and quotations, but more with the possibilities uncovered when working with other composers’ material.