The Microliths
Performed by Mutata Radio Orchestra
Bruno Guastalla, cello
Dominic Lash, double bass
Marjolaine Charbin, piano and objects
Mark Sanders, percussion
Chris Cundy, conductor
Music composed by Chris Cundy © 2022
The Microliths is a response to Corinium Museum’s display of twenty two tiny flint blades dating from the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age. They were used as harpoons fixed onto throwing spears with a birch tar or glue, and produced for composite tools such as bows and arrows.
Microliths are precision objects made by hunter gatherers who travelled vast distances and came to Gloucestershire sometime between 8’500 ~ 4’000 BCE. Individually they measure just a centimetre or two in length and each one has been cut from a piece of flint before being worked into the fine parallel lines that make each blade. Their presence here in the Stone Age to Corinium gallery draws me into their world. From behind the glass they speak of an instinctive and changing landscape. Each Microlith feels like a fleeting moment.
I’ve used lots of percussion in this piece both from the piano, played by Marjolaine Charbin and from the percussion world of tam tam, bass drum and gongs, played by Mark Sanders. We also have two low string players; Bruno Guastalla on cello and Dominic Lash on the double bass who use ricochets, pizzicato actions and sometimes more oblique noises. The score is made up of twenty two segments of suspended time, and because of the way it’s conducted the players never quite know how long each of these moments will last. It emerges from silence and explores an atmosphere of fragmented points, of refrain, and fleeting glimpses.
Bruno Guastalla, cello
Dominic Lash, double bass
Marjolaine Charbin, piano and objects
Mark Sanders, percussion
Chris Cundy, conductor
Music composed by Chris Cundy © 2022
The Microliths is a response to Corinium Museum’s display of twenty two tiny flint blades dating from the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age. They were used as harpoons fixed onto throwing spears with a birch tar or glue, and produced for composite tools such as bows and arrows.
Microliths are precision objects made by hunter gatherers who travelled vast distances and came to Gloucestershire sometime between 8’500 ~ 4’000 BCE. Individually they measure just a centimetre or two in length and each one has been cut from a piece of flint before being worked into the fine parallel lines that make each blade. Their presence here in the Stone Age to Corinium gallery draws me into their world. From behind the glass they speak of an instinctive and changing landscape. Each Microlith feels like a fleeting moment.
I’ve used lots of percussion in this piece both from the piano, played by Marjolaine Charbin and from the percussion world of tam tam, bass drum and gongs, played by Mark Sanders. We also have two low string players; Bruno Guastalla on cello and Dominic Lash on the double bass who use ricochets, pizzicato actions and sometimes more oblique noises. The score is made up of twenty two segments of suspended time, and because of the way it’s conducted the players never quite know how long each of these moments will last. It emerges from silence and explores an atmosphere of fragmented points, of refrain, and fleeting glimpses.
Microlith flints on display at Corinium Museum