Echoes of the Invisible

Echoes of the Invisible for clarinet and fixed media was written for F. Gerrard Errante in Summer, 2003. As I began this piece I had a flash of an image from Jean Cocteau's great film Beauty and the Beast, and this image has permeated and influenced this composition. Belle is running in slow motion down a long hall with windows, shear curtains on either side blowing in the wind. She is searching for something or someone, but it isn't clear what or who. Despite the fact that the curtains are moving freely in the wind, her dress and hair are unmoving as she glides, almost effortlessly down this long hall toward an unknown goal. I don't understand why I have always found this scene so moving, but the dreamlike quality of everything in this image has always entranced me. Somehow it speaks to the nature of emotional memory, and the means by which we become haunted by unseen, but pervasive residue of lives and events in the spaces we inhabit.

Captured Light is available on clarinetist F. Gerrard Errante's Delicate Balance CD on Aucourant Records.

Reviews

Particular inspirations guided the creation of many pieces: a dreamlike vision from Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast of Belle running in slow motion down a long hallway inspired Peter Terry's "Echoes of the Invisible," which offers a five-minute meditation that's soothing yet mysterious at the same time.

textura.com

Peter Terry's Echoes of the Invisible and Alex Shapiro's Water Crossing belong to many of the same sonic worlds, with slowly-changing textures underscoring a pan-diatonic world with extended, expressive clarinet lines. Both works are successful in their goals of creating constant, meditative pieces...This is, of course, the goal: allow the performer to breathe as well through pieces that are as contemplative for the performer as they are for the listener

Thomas Dempster, SEAMUS Journal

Download the score or an mp3 recording of the piece:

SCORE MP3