TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIO CLIP ON THIS PAGE YOU NEED REAL PLAYER 8 BASIC



The title of this piece is borrowed from a painting by the Finnish artist Hugo Simberg (1873-1917) in which two children are depicted carrying a wounded angel on a sedan chair. The music is a fantasia in which I endeavour to capture the expressive contradictions in Simberg's masterwork. These could be described as a precarious balance between playfulness and tragedy, innocence and knowing world-weariness, love and mischief.

The charango is a stringed instrument from the Andean highlands of Bolivia. The strings are tuned to a variable pattern, usually in five double courses. Traditionally the body is constructed from the shell of an armadillo.

In my mind, the contrast between such a roughly-crafted peasant instrument and the state-of-the-art technology employed to produce the electroacoustic sounds helped to enhance the aesthetic contradictions in Simberg's Wounded Angel. If this piece of music makes you, listener, want to see the painting, my work will have been worthwhile. You will find it in the Ateneum in Helskini.


 

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