3 MATCHES

For Poet and String Quartet

3 Matches combines my love of spoken word poetry and my love of music. This piece was based on a setting of a Simon Armitage poem from the Book ‘Book of Matches’, an anthology of short poems in which he tells the story of his life in the ephemeral time that it takes for a match to burn down. The orginal version had me speaking the poem but I didn’t connect with the material very well and so decided to write my own matches to set. The first is based on a heavy hip-hop like beat with airy sections in the middle to contrast the version of me that I hold in my head and the version of me that exists in the real world. The
second movement I split into three parts each based on characters that I invent when I see people through their living room windows with a different feel and harmonic field depending on the character. The last movement is a barnstorming ending with small solo passages for each of the string trio. This movement is in the format of a strophic song bringing the elements of popular music that inspire me to the piece