Weaver of Grass
(Piano Quintet)

Weaver of Grass was commissioned by the Schubert Ensemble Trust, the Steel Foundation and the Brighton Festival, and was first performed by the Schubert Ensemble at the Brighton Festival in May 2003. London premiere at the Wigmore Hall followed in 2005.

Weaver of Grass sports a non-musical connection to the work – at once art and artefact – of Angus MacPhee of South Uist who, through many years of mental illness, made sense of his life by making things out of grass – not decorative items but household objects such as hats, clothes and even shoes. For me these remarkable but transient creations, more than anything in the ‘avant-garde’, raise questions about the purpose of art, being deeply rooted in collective memory while not actually functional (with the possible exception of the hats). They are more like cousins once-removed of art: emblems of actual life. The skilled blending of natural materials into what their maker recognizes is a sort of metaphor for composition – but otherwise, these interesting objects do not have any material bearing on the music.

The work forms a continuous sequence but is in fact a quilt of smaller panels – almost a collection of artefacts; such as it is, this constitutes the connection with the title. Unusually for me, this work was put together not as a straight narrative but as a series of fragments, finally assembled in a chosen order. My first idea for an opening, for example, ended up in the middle, where it leads into a series of twelve little variations on a brisk note series (given out in the piano). The variations form the work’s second half. Meanwhile the fragmentary opening, with its tentative atmosphere, soon builds into something more funky and purposeful; yet the opening returns at the final climax, transformed into a storming coda, to end the quintet.

Piers Hellawell 2024