Objects of contemplation and artifice of design: Sonic structures in the music of George Benjamin
The icicle clearly delineated by the opening gesture of the upper strings in George Benjamin's A Mind of Winter is an original notational conceit, achieved by staggering the entries of the first and second violins so that a kind of stalactite is readily discernible on the page. It is the spacing of this cluster of minor seconds inside a defined timbral field and the precision with which the composer accords these, the smallest intervals within chromatic space, a rigorous series of durations, their hard edges rendered diffuse by almost inconsequential glissandi, that allows what might become academicism in the hands of a lesser craftsman to take on such a vibrant sonority. That this symbol of the coldest season is preceded by a percussionist's practically imperceptible roll with soft sticks on a suspended cymbal shows a composer deliberately relying on onomatopoeic devices to conjure up a soundscape percolated by such wintry gusts, themselves ushered in by a brief but telling period of silence that ‘fills’ the first, empty bar.