A song-cycle based around Derek Jarman’s poems might seem an unlikely prospect, but not when you consider that the scenic development in Jarman’s late films, such as The Garden (1990) and Wittgenstein (1992), has a fluidity of motion still more often found in music than in cinema (Blue – 1993 – takes imagery of sound several stages further). Donna McKevitt’s score is steeped in their atmosphere – poignant, often valedictory in tone, yet with an intensity that banishes any hint of mawkishness.
Translucence consists of 12 settings and five instrumental interludes, which act as an irregular but highly effective commentary. The music has a harmonic austerity redolent of certain ‘holy minimalist’ composers, although its impact is decidedly, even defiantly, secular. “Nature” prefaces Jarman’s angry lines with an instrumental dialogue of simmering agitation. “Sebastiane” has a poise and gentle radiance engagingly offset by the urbanity of “Sweet wisdom”. The setting of “The System” uncovers irony behind Jarman’s spontaneous (knowingly futile?) dismay with the suburban rat-race. A gravely beautiful solo cello “Prelude” leads into “I walk in this garden”, the natural culmination of the cycle and all the more moving for its restraint, allowing the changing emphasis of each verse’s last line to register in a cumulative elegy of individual and shared loss.
Performed with quiet conviction, in an appropriately clear and neutral ambience, Translucence is an affecting remembrance of Jarman’s legacy; its musical qualities likely to ensure its future as a 1990s ‘songs of innocence and experience’.Richard Whitehouse