Selected music creator for the 2023 Picture Gallery Composer-in-Residence Scheme
About the installation piece
My piece is based on Wayfarers, a smaller painting found on the right-hand side of the gallery when you enter. The painting depicts a windswept, rain-washed autumnal scene, of a person following a path through the landscape; it is also roughly divided into two halves, with the earth forming one, and the sky the other. In a way, it almost seems to depict a journey, one of darkness moving towards light; with the sky filled with godrays, providing a sense of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape.
When interpreting this musically, I at first toyed with the idea of a piece of music that grows and evolves, but how I would do this was an interesting question to tackle, as I had both a spatial and temporal aspect with which I could potentially achieve this. In the end, I decided to make greater use of the spatial aspect. The piece is entirely comprised of synthesisers, which gives it an otherworldly feel; at one end of the gallery, you have a darker timbre playing a mix of chords in a mixolydian-esque tonality, and as you move through the gallery, you will pass other instruments that interject with both consonant and dissonant melodic fragments that represent points of interest along the journey. At the far end of the gallery, the same mix of chords is played, but on a much lighter and more ethereal-sounding synthesiser – representing the sky and the hope it brings to the wanderer. Underlying everything is a dark bass synth, grounding the piece and bringing it all together.
About the music creator
Born in Manchester, Sophie Janes is a British-Australian composer whose music explores how sound fits into narrative spaces, to tell stories and evoke emotions within the listener. She has a particularly keen interest in music for film, television and video games – particularly the latter.
Sophie became interested in music from a very young age, having grown up in a very musical household, and began as a violinist and singer before later changing to viola. In her teenage years, she developed a passion for composition through music for film and narrative scoring. Starting out as a classical composer, she studied at the Junior RNCM under Joshua Brown, where she wrote many instrumental works based on stories both her own and others’, ranging from chamber music for varying ensembles to full orchestral works with narrative and storytelling at the forefront of her music. More recently, she has developed a growing interest in music technology and the many possibilities therein, particularly the way synthesisers can be used in narrative spaces.
