Works titles

About my works' titles which play with words and interconnect across my whole output: the main points of departure are M, ‘creatures’ and Commedia dell’ Arte (stock characters and acting routines called knots which are improvised sections that tie scenes together).

So: M and Modulor: EM then ES and then EsEm (knotting aspects of the two works EM and ES together, as well as hinting at the the word: esemplastic), and Jeux (games - tennis/ paired teams, antiphonal play), t’EM (that’s Yorkshire speak), Mediterranean and Medea. With Sicily you have Daedalus and the Golden Honeycomb, Aeschylus and the performance of the Oresteia at Syracusa, Persephone and her mother Demeter (Nature - wheat and pomegranate, life and death and rebirth). Mount Venus at Erice. Vulcan’s factory on the Aeolian Islands and Mount Etna (where Debussy’s L’apres-midi d’un Faune is set - a lake at the bottom of the volcano) and Syracusa again, where the great cave - the Ear of Dionysus - can be experienced. Never mind Segesta and Motya (a Phoenician - Phoenix island off Marsala) Monreale and Ortygia (where fresh water sits by sea water).

So Jeux-thème can mean: the thematic material of Debussy’s Jeux (a ballet/tennis game, love all - between 3!), I love you, I love Jeux, plus paired games/tennis.

All the creatures are drawn from the Exeter Book (Anglo-Saxon): Fox, Vixen, WULF, Dog, Cat, and Phoenix (also La Fenice Opera House in Venice - at least 3 times burned down), Dumb Show (things that can’t speak - creatures and objects) plus games such as I spy and chess (and a visual, physical theatre - Pierrot is dumb, Columbine is a fragile flower and Harlequin is a shape-changer, magician: Hey Presto!).

The Paul Klee volumes of notes are: The Thinking Eye and The Nature of Nature, plus The Pedagogical Sketch-book. The Le Corbusier volume is The Modulor.

I deal in sound as meaning.