Six of Hearts: Songs for Mary Wiegold

Six of Hearts: no. 2 The Opera
Opus 16, collage and ink, 1991

Six of Hearts: no. 3 Omple Omple
Opus 16, collage and ink, 1991

Six of Hearts: no. 4 Rest
Opus 16, collage and ink, 1991

Six of Hearts: no. 5 This Silence Vibrating
Opus 16, collage and ink, 1991

Six of Hearts: no. 6 The Last Words On Earth
Opus 16, collage and ink, 1991

Cover of release by Largo, 1999

Six of Hearts: Songs for Mary Wiegold performed by Mary Wiegold and the Composers Ensemble, conducted by John Woolrich, recorded at St Silas Church, London, December 1993

1. The Chant Lifted The Shadow

2. The Opera (moving Vienna)

3. Omple Omple

4. Rest (broken syllables)

5. This Silence Vibrating

6. The Last Words On Earth

From the artist's statement 

Apart from the collaboration with Jean-Yves Bosseur on the performance version of Last Notes from Endenich I had written no music for almost twenty years. My excursions into composition seemed to belong to a brief, permissively experimental moment in the English avant- garde when interesting bridges were built between music and the visual arts. In the sixties there was an especially strong presence of composers and musicians in English art schools.

But in 1991 John Woolrich phoned me out of the blue and asked me if I would write a song for Mary Wiegold and Composers Ensemble. Having agreed that I would try something miniature to a text of my own, I invited Mary Wiegold to choose some pages of A Heart of A Humument which had words that appealed to her.

For all their slenderness and brevity I found the songs torturously difficult to write. They caused me much anxiety, as did the prospect of going down to Dartington Hall to hear them rehearsed and performed in public. Yet it was auspicious that they were to get their first airing in the place where their Ur-lyricist W.H. Mallock was born. Better still I found the songs were in safe and sympathetic hands. John Woolrich directed the Ensemble with understanding and Mary Wiegold (who as everyone should know sings like a dream) intuited their fragile atmosphere straight away.