Inspiration

You'll imagine I chose pictures of trees because the title of the album was Linden Wood. If only. There was no title at that stage: the title came from the cover picture.

	I did ask the composer his intentions. It was something to do with boundaries: oddly geometric.
	I listened to the music. I was struck by the interplay of sound: sounds developing and interacting. There was a lot of play on the spaces between the sounds. Although the music suggested many other things, 'space' or 'gaps' was something I felt I could put on the page.

I had one more clue to the composer's mind: the track titles. I was struck by how many of them relate to the natural, or to elemental forces. There's Persephone: goddess of corn, death and seasons; Halcyon, daughter of the winds is associated with a season of calm on the seas; Chac is a god of rain; Iona is a wind-swept island where Columba set up his monastery. Even Camel Train evokes a vast landscape of dunes punctuated by tiny camels. Only Siegfried's Dream seems to have nothing to do with nature. I suppose this title is really a Wagnerian joke, but Siegfried is a mythic hero, so perhaps it is not stretching things too far to view him as elemental too.