- Date: 1985
- Composer: Peter Maxwell Davies
- Period: Contemporary (1950- )
Review
While textbook references to Peter Maxwell Davies usually focus on his studies of dark psychological dysfunction (most prominently the Eight Songs for a Mad King), one of his most popular works among symphony orchestra audiences is a much more lighthearted exercise. An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise, commissioned by John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1985, is a delightfully vivid musical pictorial of a jubilant and rather boozy wedding party on the Orkneyan isle of Hoy, off the northern coast of the Scottish mainland.In fact, the musical account is rendered first-hand. Though Davies traces his ancestral roots to Scotland, his musical roots took soil there when, beginning in 1970, he began traveling to Orkney for creative retreats. An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise was inspired by the composer's attendance at an actual wedding party on Hoy. The work is as extroverted as any of Davies', but joyously so -- the exaggerated gestures reflect those of the scene's revelry, as well as the guest's increasing intoxication. The composer's characteristic hall-of-mirrors approach to musical allusion is employed with highly comic effect as lyrical and nostalgic (though generally not borrowed) tunes spin themselves into happy confusion, rhythms intermittently trip forward or hiccup, and harmonies sway and swoon with the rustic and boisterous crowd.
The work is highly pictorial, its episodic sections corresponding closely with the succession of events witnessed by the composer. As the piece opens the guests are just arriving, the sour weather outside contrasting the festivities inside the hall. To a processional tune passed around the woodwind section, the guests ceremoniously greet the bride and groom. The brass enter noisily as the first round of drinks are passed, the bouncy rhythms of the Scottish snap setting the melodic scene. The musicians then noisily tune their instruments in preparation for the evening's dances. With each new tune the group becomes audibly more intoxicated, the brass smearing their way through some passages and the melody occasionally stepping out of line. The insistent oom-pahs continue, however, increasing in tempo and rhythmic drive (while all the while slipping and sliding with increasing frequency). The lead fiddle seems particularly well stocked; a lilting solo waxes comically rhapsodic, with intermittent dizzy spells and moments of harmonic confusion. The dancing builds further until the whiskey takes its full effect and the partygoers drift from the dance floor. The party has apparently lasted all night, for as the guests leave they look across the water to see the first rays of dawn. At this point Davies works an ingenious bit of programmatic magic: a Highland bagpiper suddenly appears in the back of the concert hall. He passes majestically through the audience in full Scots regalia, playing a grand march as he approaches the orchestra. The stirring music carries a clever metaphor. The Highland pipes, not native to Orkney, represent the dawn as viewed by the Orkney party, the sun rising across the bay over Caithness. ~ All Music Guide
