Last Letters

Jan Morris’s brilliant novel Last Letters From Hav paints such a convincing portrait of a small nation somewhere on the Mediterranean edge of Europe that some readers, thinking it real, wrote the author for advice regarding travel itineraries!

This magical, high-spirited yet mysterious and strange book (and its lesser but still-worthy sequel Hav of the Myrmidons), with its uneasy undercurrent of darkness, inspired this, my third short symphony (following Short Symphony and Slow Homecoming). The first movement describes the high-spirited travelogue of the first book, while the second, slower, more repetitive and hieratic, evokes the oligarchic myrmidons of the transformed city in the second novel.

Musically, the piece is based around single note gestures individually introduced then combined, similar yet subtly differentiated, like strangers in a strange land. Together we journey to an unfamiliar place during which, as in Hav, I hope the crowds and clouds will gradually part and the essence of the place reveal itself to the listener.