Memories from a Bookmark: A Symphonic Poem for Orchestra

A life becomes a journey; a journey becomes a story; a story becomes music.

 

Programme note

Demo recording

Score

This piece is inspired by my grandmother, Anne Burton.

Anne was born in Rhymney, South Wales during 1914, around the time of the outbreak of World War One. Growing up poor, she married young and badly. To say the marriage to my grandfather was difficult is to be charitable; it was bad enough for her leave her home and family and seek safety the other side of the country in Kent.

She left at a time when doing so would have been very rare indeed, even frowned upon, but she did it non-the-less, which showed great strength of will and a lot of courage.

Anne lived in Kent, in Crayford to be exact, during the height of World War Two, and found work operating a capstan lathe at the Crayford Branch of The Woolwich Arsenal, making parts for military equipment.

After the war, she met Jack Burton, who was the love of her life, and they lived happily together for about 20 years or so, until his untimely death in 1967.

Anne loved her daughter, Nesta, whom she was reunited with a few years after leaving South Wales, and her two grandsons, John and me.

I remember her love well; it took the form of a quiet care, constant kindness and unfaltering encouragement.

Having returned to South Wales in later years, Anne died in Cardiff Infirmary just after New Year 1980. She was 65 years old. I knew her for too short a time.

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My music starts with the bookmark. Anne gave it to me over 50 years ago, and I still use it today.

As I turn pages and place the bookmark, I am prompted to remember my grandmother and imagine her life and character.

Firstly, I remember her calm and constant presence.

Then I move on: I imagine her wedding and the sadness and torment that followed it; I sense her resolve to change things for the better; I imagine her journey and her rush of feelings as she leaves her home in Wales and travels by train to Kent; I imagine her at her capstan lathe; I feel her hope for the future; I sense her future love for Jack; I feel again her love for her daughter and grandsons.

The music becomes a dream; perhaps it is a little like one of the dreams Anne had at the end of her life.

This music is about a life that hoped and never gave up hoping.

Compositions by Charles M Lines

Here are the compositions I have written: 

Charles M Lines: compositions

They are presented in chronological order, from most recent to earliest.

If you would like to perform any of these pieces, please leave comment here or contact me via Facebook or any of the other addresses provided. 

Tsurara: A Tone Poem for Small Orchestra and Soprano Chorus

Tsurara is inspired by the Tsurara Onna, the icicle woman of Japanese folklore: a figure who appears in winter and vanishes with the thaw.

Rather than retelling the myth, the piece explores the emotional climate she suggests: beauty held in tension, intimacy edged with cold, presence always on the verge of disappearance.

The music unfolds within a world of suspended breath. The orchestra plays sempre non vibrato and at the softest of dynamics, creating a soundscape that feels frozen, fragile and foreboding. Bright percussion glints through the texture like light catching upon ice.

Eventually, a brief, brittle quickening skates upon the stillness: bright, pointillistic, unstable; it threatens to slightly crack the frozen surface of the music.

Then the work’s most intimate moment emerges: a passage where something a little warmer, melting and more vulnerable reveals itself.

Later, like voices heard through falling snow, a soprano chorus begins to sing: bright, insistent, then distant.

They deepen the hypnotic song of Tsurara.

Then the song fades, slowly rising and dissolving into the cold night air.

What remains is a feeling of something glimpsed and too quickly lost: an ethereal beauty of frost, longing, and gentle breath.

 

Demo Recording

Score

Tsurara Onna

Tree withering cold

Frost fingers tap my window:

Light, light, so lightly;

I feel your ice mist stir me…

Strangely welcome in the night.

 

In winter you come,

To stay with me in the dark:

Feeding on my warmth,

Sharing your seductive cold;

We entwine and slowly merge.

 

Skin withering cold

Lips finding and kissing me

Through the night softly;

I feel my hot life flowing

Toward your rime-crusted heart;

 

Soul withering cold;

Your arms are the freezing clouds

That carry me up,

Up toward the aloof stars,

Where you and I disappear.  

                                                                    CML