Midden Find: Haw
for Hardanger d'Amore and Sinfonietta
“Haw” is the first of the five movements of Midden Find, a piece co-composed by myself and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and featuring Caoimhín as soloist on Hardanger d’Amore, with the terrific sinfonietta Contemporaneous.
Midden Find will join Cumha na Cuimhní on our upcoming album release in early 2025, tentatively titled Stromatoliths. Listen here to this first movement…
“Haw,” movement 1 from Midden Find
- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Hardanger d’Amore
- Contemporaneous, conducted by David Bloom
- Co-composed by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Dan Trueman
- Orchestral setting by Dan Trueman
- Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Matt Poirier
from the album Stromatoliths, on Many Arrows Music
and read on if you wish…
About Midden Find, Caoimhín and I have written:
A midden may contain a mysterious world of beauty for the archaeologist; however for those long-disappeared creatures—human or otherwise—who created it, the midden was merely a place to throw one's garbage.
For some years now, we make new tunes together. They come into being piece by piece: a shard here, a sliver there — slowly we get a sense of what the tune is to become. It goes the other way, too — a fully formed piece is shattered into fragments, seeking to find the smallest piece which hints at the ghost of the whole.
Midden Find comprises five such tunes:
“Haw” was discovered with surprise.
“Henge” was discarded long ago, then dug up again. It seems to us as though it could once have served for a ritual or meditation.
A tune such as “Stromatolith” may be rough around the edges, unfinished, perhaps either damaged by neglect or smoothed by weathering like sea-glass.
“Quern Stone” once had a purpose, long ago.
And “I Can Feel It In My Bones” is the hair standing on the back of your head, because you just know. (What it is that you know is a little hard to put your finger on.)
About “Haw,” Caoimhín has more to say:
Arsene's character in Samuel Beckett's 'Watt' stays with you, a ghost of
a man on his own in the dark, quietly picking his nose. We owe "Haw" to
him:“Of all the laughs that strictly speaking are not laughs, but modes of
ululation, only three I think need detain us, I mean the bitter, the
hollow and the mirthless. They correspond to successive… how shall I say
successive… suc… successive excoriations of the understanding, and the
passage from the one to the other is the passage from the lesser to the
greater, from the lower to the higher, from the outer to the inner, from
the gross to the fine, from the matter to the form. The laugh that now
is mirthless once was hollow, the laugh that once was hollow once was
bitter. And the laugh that once was bitter? Eyewater, Mr. Watt,
eyewater. But do not let us waste our time with that. . . . The bitter,
the hollow and—Haw! Haw!— the mirthless. The bitter laugh laughs at that
which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at
that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not
true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down
the snout—Haw!—so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh
laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke,
in a word the laugh that laughs—silence please—at that which is unhappy.”― Samuel Beckett, Watt
I first encountered Beckett's work as a student, when I happened to buy
a ticket to see John Hurt perform Krapp's Last Tape at The Gate Theatre
in Dublin. It was one of those before and after moments one has in
one's life, and his work has haunted me ever since, delighted me,
fascinated me. I love how it evolves over his lifetime, refining an
aesthetic of less to the point where there's nearly nothing left.
For those so inclined, here is the score for “Haw.”
The rest of the movements, and more about the complete record, in upcoming posts…