Nick Roth's 'Woodland Heights'

Nick Roth's 'Woodland Heights'

Nick Roth/Hong Kong New Music Ensemble

Woodland Heights for String Orchestra (2014) 

World Premiere @ Sounds of Tomorrow / ISCM World Music Days 2016 Tongyeong

Performed by the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and Alumni from The Modern Academy. 

Sharon Andrea Choa - conductor

William Lane - viola solo

Film by Robert Cahen and Thierry Maury

Woodland Heights is a study of forest canopy ecology. More specifically, the work is an illustration of the premise that “species composition and tree size distributions become more diverse with increasing stand age” and that “with increasing age stochastic processes play increasingly important roles in creating structural complexity” ¹.

The form of the piece maps the growth of a model forest stand over a projected 720-year period, where a crotchet in the score is equal to a year in ecological time. The structure is divided into three successionary periods demarcated by radical change in accordance with the principle that “local disturbances not only maintain the character of the system by maintaining the species that are early colonists but poor competitors; they also maintain the resiliency of the system, preserving the opportunistic species that thrive under the conditions accompanying the unpredictable but inevitable environmental changes that occur at broader spatial scales, such as windthrows or fire.” ²

The imagined forest is composed of seven tree species common to the garden of my prior family home in Chorleywood, from which the piece also takes its title. The first two sections map the projected interactions of six species: Silver Birch (Betula pendula), Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), Holly (Ilex aquifolium), Rowan (Sorbus rosaceae), Beech (Fagus sylvatica) and Oak (Quercus robur) which take their roots from E, A, D, C#, G and C respectively. In the third section, the viola solo introduces the seventh species: Wild Apple (Malus sylvatica) on Bb.

Data from the projected interaction of seven genera is translated into musical elements: maximal height, average lifespan and reproductive cycle. These form gestures expressing the statistical distribution of harmonics from seven individual fundamentals, with phyllotaxic elements shaping motivic structure and adaptive qualities delineating the formal architecture of the piece.

Writing this piece necessitated an exploration of the fascinating terrain that is contemporary ecology and provided a reassurance that humanity’s deep love of the biosphere still finds expression in our societal priorities. Today’s ecologists have embedded conservational and educational elements deep into their discipline and together form a large and extremely open network of individuals working across the world to better understand and preserve the immense diversity found on planet Earth. In the words of two of canopy ecology’s pioneers: “Perhaps that is the ultimate goal of canopy research – all scientific research for that matter – to produce a sense of the vast and the infinite and to promote our sense of wonder, a curiosity that needs to be fed by experience to be long-lived.” ³

It requires very little rephrasing of this idea to appreciate that the beauty of this statement could be applied equally to the objective of the artist. In composing this work I have come to understand music thus as a form of translative epistemology. The weblike creational processes of investigation, experimentation and epiphany share many commonalities across the Sciences and the Arts; just as two hands work together to play the violin, these two complimentary aspects of human nature must form part of a single integrated response to the questions of our environment. 

I am greatly indebted to numerous individuals who assisted in the creation of this work. In particular I would like to thank Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy, Dr. Margaret D. Lowman, Dr. Simon Levin, Dr. Henry S. Horn, Dr. Michael Jones, Dr. Sven P. Batke and Noel O’Shea for their scientific and technical expertise; Cora Venus Lunny, Robin Panter, Jonathan Hargreaves, Malachy Robinson, Adrian Hart, Sean Maynard-Smith, Judith Ring, Olesya Zdorovetska, Francesco Turrisi, Linda Bsiri, Alan Pierson, Sachiko Kuriowa, Ellen Fallowfield†, Kate Ellis and Russell Rolen for their musical counsel; HKNME, Sharon Andrea Choa, all @ISCM, Jihee, WonCheol and all @ TIMF, Keith, Evonne, Mary, Jonathan and all @ CMC, Anna Murray / AIC and Culture Ireland for all their help with the facilitation of the premiere, Sheila Pratschke and Nora Hickey M’Sichili, together with all of the staff at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris for the amazing opportunity to work on this piece in such creatively fertile surroundings and a special thanks to artist Ruth O’Donnell for providing the beautiful illustrations to the score.

This piece is dedicated to the trees of “Woodland Heights”, Greenhills Close, Chorleywood – to the laurel, oak, birch, rowan, beech, holly…and the wild apple.

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Published by jmnewsletter on 17 May 2016

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