Cornutopia Music

About this album

This album explores ekphrasis, the transmutation of art through different media. Typically applied to poetry inspired by paintings or artworks, ekphrastic music seeks to condense the essential feeling of an artwork in music.

The style of the music continues the trend from Cycles & Shadows, expressive music centred around piano performances, augmented with other electronic instruments with an orchestral feeling, to create something completely new, yet linked to the cusp between the classical and romantic eras.

The music for Swift Trilogy was composed in 2016, shortly after Mark completed the final painting in the series. His aim was to create music that conveyed an eerie feeling to complement the paintings, the audio equivalent of a background layer of grey; this is why rain and mist permeate this music.

The Love Reliquary music was written in 2017, at around the time of Cycles & Shadows, and illustrates the change of direction of his musical style which began to emerge at that time.

The first six tracks were created in response to Ekphrastic Towers, an exhibition of art and poetry by the Write Out Loud poetry group and curated by John Keane. He was asked to contribute some artwork to the exhibition and suggested that he compose some music about the items in the exhibition. He selected objects and poems that allowed a mix of musical styles, and, as with the Swift music, tried to condense and re-express the feelings of the source material, rather than create something descriptive.

In a final twist of the ekphrastic theme, Mark decided to create a piece of music inspired by another piece of music. In this way, and Beethoven's Für Elise led to a melody dedicated to Deborah Edgeley.