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The Imagined Forest

The Imagined Forest
Grace-Evangeline Mason
(b. October 1994 in Hamburg)

Grace-Evangeline Mason's The Imagined Forest guides us through a world created by sonic textures and musical narrative. The Composer’s Notes on the first page of her score make clear her inspiration and intentions. “The Imagined Forest […] is a fantastical journey through a space that appears to be a familiar impression of nature, but simultaneously somewhere entirely unknown. The forest, a place rooted in fairy tales, fantasy and folklore, often represents areas of refuge, danger, transformation, and adventure. Recognising the forest as an ethereal and intangible entity, the piece seeks to momentarily transport the listener somewhere intimate and yet, surreal.

“The piece is inspired by the work of Clare Celeste Börsch, a Berlin-based artist who uses collage techniques to build imagined worlds filled with foliage and fauna. Bringing together thousands of delicate hand cut paper images, she creates intricate and immersive spaces to transform ordinary rooms into magical forests. The Imagined Forest travels through the musical space by interweaving atmospheric textures and fragmentary melodic lines as a collage of fleeting images[.]”

A musical fragment, turned every which way, but starting consistently with a fast triplet followed by a few notes with longer values, Mason describes as the central theme that “wanders through the piece towards enclosed glades where it pauses, as if it is interspersed with shimmering light from the canopies above and the dreamlike dances from the elements of nature[.]”

She offers an experience that may be different for every listener: “Both music and art are fascinating in that countless people can all be experiencing the same work at once and yet, through the lens of their own influence, encounter a completely different artwork. This piece is therefore not a prescriptive experience but is instead a fictional journey; whether it is blooming with flora, captivated by colour, or an airy garden darkened by storm, it is the forest of your own imagination.”

If Mason’s name is unfamiliar it won’t be for long. She burst onto the British musical scene winning the BBC Young Composer competition in 2013 at the age of 18. Since then she has fulfilled high-profile commissions for the BBC including a piece for the 300th anniversary of Handel’s Water Music. The Imagined Forest is her most prestigious commission to date, written for the confluence of the 150th anniversary of Royal Albert Hall, the beginning of the BBC Proms 2021 season (the most famous musical event on the British musical calendar), and the first Royal Liverpool Philharmonic concert under its new Chief Conductor, Domingo Hindoyan. 

© 2010, 2015, 2023 by Steven Hollingsworth, Creative Commons Public Attribution 3.0 United States

 

The Imagined Forest

The Imagined Forest
Grace-Evangeline Mason
(b. October 1994 in Hamburg)

Grace-Evangeline Mason's The Imagined Forest guides us through a world created by sonic textures and musical narrative. The Composer’s Notes on the first page of her score make clear her inspiration and intentions. “The Imagined Forest […] is a fantastical journey through a space that appears to be a familiar impression of nature, but simultaneously somewhere entirely unknown. The forest, a place rooted in fairy tales, fantasy and folklore, often represents areas of refuge, danger, transformation, and adventure. Recognising the forest as an ethereal and intangible entity, the piece seeks to momentarily transport the listener somewhere intimate and yet, surreal.

“The piece is inspired by the work of Clare Celeste Börsch, a Berlin-based artist who uses collage techniques to build imagined worlds filled with foliage and fauna. Bringing together thousands of delicate hand cut paper images, she creates intricate and immersive spaces to transform ordinary rooms into magical forests. The Imagined Forest travels through the musical space by interweaving atmospheric textures and fragmentary melodic lines as a collage of fleeting images[.]”

A musical fragment, turned every which way, but starting consistently with a fast triplet followed by a few notes with longer values, Mason describes as the central theme that “wanders through the piece towards enclosed glades where it pauses, as if it is interspersed with shimmering light from the canopies above and the dreamlike dances from the elements of nature[.]”

She offers an experience that may be different for every listener: “Both music and art are fascinating in that countless people can all be experiencing the same work at once and yet, through the lens of their own influence, encounter a completely different artwork. This piece is therefore not a prescriptive experience but is instead a fictional journey; whether it is blooming with flora, captivated by colour, or an airy garden darkened by storm, it is the forest of your own imagination.”

If Mason’s name is unfamiliar it won’t be for long. She burst onto the British musical scene winning the BBC Young Composer competition in 2013 at the age of 18. Since then she has fulfilled high-profile commissions for the BBC including a piece for the 300th anniversary of Handel’s Water Music. The Imagined Forest is her most prestigious commission to date, written for the confluence of the 150th anniversary of Royal Albert Hall, the beginning of the BBC Proms 2021 season (the most famous musical event on the British musical calendar), and the first Royal Liverpool Philharmonic concert under its new Chief Conductor, Domingo Hindoyan. 

© 2010, 2015, 2023 by Steven Hollingsworth, Creative Commons Public Attribution 3.0 United States