【巴里·科宁厄姆】时光的园丁 (2009-11)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u_DkLTdQIXQ&pp=ygUPYmFycnkgY29ueW5naGFt
Barry Conyngham - Gardener of Time for orchestra (2009-11)

NOTE

This work is written in memory of esteemed conductor Hiroyuki Iwaki.

Its shape and mood are inspired by Gardener of Time, a short essay by our mutual friend Toru Takemitsu, which owes its title to an image in a Haiku by Australian schoolgirl Susan Morrison (in Miracles: Poems by Children of the English Speaking World, edited by Richard Lewis, 1966).

The poem reads:

Hours are the leaves of life.
And I am their gardener.
Each hour falls down slow.

The essay begins with Takemitsu gazing out over the foothills of Nagano Prefecture. “The wind begins. The mists lift...” His mind wanders: he reflects on life, on death, on nature, on composition. “I do not stop composing, because I cannot give up being one of these gardeners cultivating infinite time.”

The essay ends, “Moved by the view of those mountains, lost in thought, I found that time passed quickly and the mountains were again covered by clouds, lost from sight.”

An exciting, energetic, surprising, thoughtful, sensitive, and full–of–life person, Maestro Iwaki was also a “gardener of time” — planning and shaping each performance, allowing each piece to flower, and leaving behind colourful experiences that stay in the mind.

Barry Conyngham (April 2010)