The Rose Window
Èist 's coimhead / listen and watch
commissioned by spirit 360, highlife highlnad
“I want the listener to look through the window and back in time.”
Background
The Rose Window is a piece intertwining spoken word and clàrsach, celebrating the iconic Stewart Restaurant of Inverness and inspired by the restaurant's incredible stained glass window. Drawing together advert postings, menu snippets and the words of those who remember the restaurant in its prime - this piece encapsulates one of Inverness' historical gems.
I worked on this project with ethnomusicologist, Christina Stewart, and it was one very close to our hearts; we were delighted to be able to create something so personal as a part of the Spirit 360 project. The Stewart Restaurant was in our family for several generations and I grew up hearing stories about it and the marvellous rose window. It was so touching to hear all the wonderful things locals had to say about the restaurant and really quite humbling to learn that it is such an iconic piece of Inverness’ history.
For many years, the rose window was a commanding feature of the Stewart Restaurant, which was founded by Christina's grandfather and latterly owned by my grandfather (Christina's father) and his two sisters. Numerous family members, former staff and customers contributed their fond memories of the restaurant and these were collated by Christina, along with quotations from printed primary sources to form the spoken word element of the track.
The Composition Process
When embarking on the composition process of this piece, I took a different approach than I had to tune writing in the past. This piece was longer than anything I had written before and was quite daunting to start with. I set about coming up with a plan for the structure of the piece, I knew that I wanted it all to hang together as one thing - rather than a set of shorter tunes. However, writing a ten minute long tune start to finish seemed overwhelming, and a bit silly!
So, how to start actually writing some notes? Christina had already recorded the spoken word part of the track so I listened to this over and over, while messing around with random ostinati (short musical patterns) for a while and did not really get anywhere. I decided that I need to set myself some boundaries; what key and time signature did I want the piece to be in? I settled on the key of Dmj (because I wanted the piece to feel happy) and 3/4, or waltz, time. I gravitated towards a waltz because I wanted to capture the feeling of nostalgia; the restuarant was in its' prime in the 60s and 70s and when I think of this time period I think of young (and old) people waltzing around the dancefloor at both ceilidhs and in ballrooms. I must admit that at this point I was still pretty intimidated by the length of the piece I was writing so, I reverted to what I know best structurally and wrote a two part waltz in D major. This was around three minutes long, now I had to make it ten!
After I had written the melody, I went back to the spoken word track and really thought about the journey that the words take. I wanted to highlight certain parts that featured fond memories of the window and I felt that there needed to be some kind of change in the last minute or so when we learn that the resturant had to close. The use of the loop pedal was almost incidental - I had recently been given it and wanted an excuse to use it! - but became a key feature of the piece. Initailly, playing the steady waltz rythm in the left hand accompaniment was just to keep myself in time as I wrote the melody, but I grew to like it and it worked perfectly as a wee riff to loop. This became the backbone to the whole piece as I used it as a break from the main melody while still linking the different sections. The 'reverse' function on the pedal created a sound that really sucked you in and added to the overall immersive feeling that I was trying to establish.
To bring about a slightly sadder feel to the end of the piece, I employed a very simple, but effective, technique. I just changed the chords for the second part of the melody. All the way through the piece I used the same cord progession for both parts of melody, and infact, these chords were all just inversions of Dmj. By changing chord to the reative minor, the melody takes on a totally diferent feel, one which I felt fitted the closing of the restaurant and the end of an era. I deliberately left the piece on an imperfect cadence (sounding unfinished) because I wanted to give the listener a chance to take in everything they had just heard and just take a moment to sit with their thoughts.
When Christina heard what I did with the track, she confessed to me that she had wanted to end with the official closing notice of the restaurant but could not find it. She hadn't particularly thought of the ending as being emotional at the time of recording the spoken part but my simple chord change brought different meaning to the words. It honestly brought a tear to both of our eyes - but of course we are slightly biased!
Trad Award Nomination
I am extremely chuffed that 'The Rose Window' was shortlisted under the 'Original Work of the Year' category at the Trad Awards 2023.
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This piece was commissioned by Spirit 360.
Spirit of the Highlands and Islands (Spirit 360) was a project delivered by High Life Highland in partnership with The Highland Council and in collaboration with Visit Scotland. Artists from all over the Highlands were commissioned to create pieces in all art forms which celebrate and showcase the diverse natural and cultural heritage of the region. The Spirit of the Highlands and Islands project is part of the wider Inverness Castle Experience development project. The overarching project will see the transformation of Inverness Castle through £30m investment from the Scottish and UK Governments, The Highland Council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and a range of other partners.