What came first, the chicken or the egg? Or, in the case of Anna Clyne’s work, the sound or the visuals? When the British-born, US-based composer came to create Night Ferry, the turbulent sea-washed soundscape inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, she placed large panels around her studio. Alternating between painting and composing, Clyne transferred the brushstrokes into notes – and vice versa – until the projects became co-creations, inextricably linked. ‘As the music evolved so did the mural, and as the mural evolved so did the music,’ she says. ‘At the end there was a 15 foot-long painting and a 25-minute composition.’
Blackened, jaw-like waves rise up from the seabed, while a polaroid warns that ‘pain comes from darkness’. Strings is a thrillingly evocative piece, strengthened by the deep colours on the page and in the score. It’s easy to see why the 2012 work was selected as one of the Ten Pieces, the BBC’s flagship educational resource for classical music. ‘A lot of art uses some of the same structural elements as music,’ explains Clyne. ‘There’s gesture, rhythm, composition, shapes, intensity. Graphic scores can be very liberating.’ Since then, Clyne has continued to explore this composing method. She’s currently focussed on colours as part of the acrostic piece , where seven movements are each devoted to plum, amber, lava, ebony, teal, tangerine and emerald.
