D A R W I N ’S SIN DRAW

for solo violin and ensemble by Andrew Poppy

In Leipzig, exactly a hundred and fifty years ago, Clara Schumann was giving the first
performance of her husband’s piano concerto. A young Greg listened, inspired,
enraptured, dreaming up his own feat of transgression. His famous A minor concerto
became iconic of the striding heroic romanticism that seems to be the spirit of the
form. At exactly the same time in London Charles Darwin was publishing his ‘On the
Origin of Species’. One hundred and fifty years is a long time ago, but it’s not that
long. The year 1858 is no longer in living conscious memory perhaps but DNA
memory is another thing.

It seems Darwin had much to say about the concerto. Someone else had the same idea
at the same time but it was Darwin who published and whose name is on the tin.
Perhaps he had the best title. His work maps the process of survival; what wins and
what exists. And by implication what loses and doesn’t exist. Or perhaps how what
wins has obscured what loses or doesn’t at first sight or first hearing appear to exist.
Those things that do exist but only at the limits of the imagination. That special quiet
sound Menuhin made as he removed the mute for the last movement of the Russell
Wallace violin concerto one evening in April in Paris in 1949.

Darwin’s book is a marker of a certain kind of progress. However the thing I find
most interesting is his doubt, which surfaces in the Chapter called ‘Difficulties on the
Absence or Rarity of Transitional Varieties’. To put it another way: why doesn’t
infinite variety exist? Or to put it another way: those tunes that didn’t stick in the
memory, are they failures that got stuck on their way to the inevitability of being
music? Or to put it another way: the hoof footed man of mythology, did he really
exist? Is the unique individual an aberration from the gene pool or are we all potential
Lucifers waiting for someone to write us the appropriate cadenza?

The soloist with ensemble provokes a number of questions. Does ‘the gift’ mark out
the soloist and thrust him forward? Or is he a chosen one? A king bred for the state.
Or is he a sacrifice, an ‘other’, bred for burning at the stake! Girard has an interesting
idea that kingship is the ritual of human sacrifice with the death part endlessly
deferred. The ‘scape goat’ of human sacrifice magically brought order and calm to
moments of strife in the ancient world. If only it were possible now! But aren’t we all
lambs at the table of dust. Smelling the source of a self we don’t know or understand.
There is no gene without the pool. We splash about in the ocean of unknowing it
seems.

The concerto problem is always with us. It could be translated as: what comes first,
the tune or the harmony? OK, so we don’t do harmony now; we only do noise.
Although I’m still quite fond of the noise in the C7 chord. I’ve been looking at
Bridget Riley’s work ‘Composition with Circles’. The floating grid of black line
circles can be analysed as the intersection of 4 superimposed planes. But knowing this
doesn’t stop the constant movement of the eye across the surface of the piece looking
for the single point of focus. Listening in for the tune that isn’t there.

Who is the soloist? In a trance of transformation, is he an orphan standing outside the

family of instruments? Darwin has much to say about the concerto. How it’s the
lottery of the fall. A map of survival techniques. Structure and detail. What wins, who
is still standing at the end, who accepts the bite of public gaze?

How could there be ‘transitional variety’? You are either at home with a cup of tea or
walking the tight rope-around-the-neck. The whole town is waiting for you to drop.
Icarus. You fall down. Or not. Or at least you get up again. Until you don’t. Hero.
Until you’re not!

I’m worried that everything seems to be in the past for Darwin. What about the
creative mind? Where is the continuous creation of unforeseen novelty that gives us
hope? I’m struggling with these thoughts as I spin 6 pitches in the air in the hope that
when they fall they will fall as meaningful music for someone.

‘Darwin’s Sin Draw’ has been made especially for Darragh Morgan and The Crash
Ensemble and with many thanks to Darragh and Donnacha Dennehy for making it
happen.

Darwin’s Sin Draw is for solo violin and flexible amplified ensemble with playback
and sound projection by the composer. Instrumentation for the Crash Ensemble
version is: flute, clarinet, trombone, electric guitar, electric bass, percussion
(vibs/glock/ xylo /tom toms) piano or electric keyboard, violin, viola, cello and double
bass. Published by High Bridge Projects.

Andrew Poppy

www.myspace.com/andrewpoppy

Image by Glyn Perrin