• Anthony Payne
  • Empty Landscape - Heart's Ease (1995)

  • Chester Music Ltd (World)

Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 as part of the Year of Music 1995

Commissioned for the Nash Ensemble

  • ob.cl/hn/vn.va.vc
  • 15 min

Programme Note

Naming a piece of music can pose vexing questions. I knew what the present piece was going to be about from the outset, the opposition of two contrasted types of material - highly volatile and active as against calmly lyrical; but I could not find a title to suggest this process and the emotional fields it would articulate. Suddenly one day, when the piece was already well udner way, the words 'Empty Landscape - Heart's Ease' floated into my mind. They seemed obliquely relevant to some of the piece's quieter moments, but no more than that. In the end, however, and after much dallying, I opted for them as the title, bearing in mind the thought that a person's name doesn't have to tell you what they are about, or what they look like. So it was with my work's name. It seemed a more gracious title than Sextet (for oboe, clarinet, horn and string trio) with two types of music interlaced in six continuous sections:
A (active music) - 45 bars
B (calm music) - 15 mars
A - 30
B - 30
A - 15
B - 45
- the active ones growing shorter as the calm are extended.
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Empty Landscape – Heart's Ease

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