The Seven Men of Moidart
(written 1994-5)
I started writing The Seven Men of Moidart at the age of 19 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Culloden. The Seven Men were Bonny Prince Charlies seven companions that accompanied him on his ill-fated quest in 1745.
The piece can be seen to represent the Culloden battlefield before, during and after the battle. I am a keen mountaineer and the Scottish landscape is one of which I am very fond. During the writing of this piece I was thinking a lot about the land and our relation to it. In particular I thought a lot about how constant the land is - generations have fought and died over it and, whilst they have gone, the land still remains. Whilst the slow music framing the piece can be seen to represent Culloden immediately before/after the battle, it is also a representation of a more infinite time frame, broken temporarily by the violence of the battle in the middle. Hanging over Culloden Moor, there is a sadness, as though the land carries a remembrance of what has gone on, and I have tried to capture something of this in the piece.
Back in 1995, when I wrote this piece, Scottish nationalism felt like a hotter issue than now - the memory of Thatcher’s poll tax experiment on the Scots was still warm, as was the hatred of the soon-to-be-booted-out-of-Scotland Conservative party of the time, and the independence movement was getting particularly heated, eg Andrew McIntosh had just been jailed for a Scottish Separatist letter-bomb campaign and of course there was the looming anniversary of the Jacobite Rebellion. I used the writing of this piece as a way of working through my own thoughts on the issue, so on a third level, the piece can be seen to represent the Scottish land (constant throughout); and the violent interlude represents the political turbulence of the late ‘80’s/early ‘90’s.
I started writing The Seven Men of Moidart at the age of 19 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Culloden. The Seven Men were Bonny Prince Charlies seven companions that accompanied him on his ill-fated quest in 1745.
The piece can be seen to represent the Culloden battlefield before, during and after the battle. I am a keen mountaineer and the Scottish landscape is one of which I am very fond. During the writing of this piece I was thinking a lot about the land and our relation to it. In particular I thought a lot about how constant the land is - generations have fought and died over it and, whilst they have gone, the land still remains. Whilst the slow music framing the piece can be seen to represent Culloden immediately before/after the battle, it is also a representation of a more infinite time frame, broken temporarily by the violence of the battle in the middle. Hanging over Culloden Moor, there is a sadness, as though the land carries a remembrance of what has gone on, and I have tried to capture something of this in the piece.
Back in 1995, when I wrote this piece, Scottish nationalism felt like a hotter issue than now - the memory of Thatcher’s poll tax experiment on the Scots was still warm, as was the hatred of the soon-to-be-booted-out-of-Scotland Conservative party of the time, and the independence movement was getting particularly heated, eg Andrew McIntosh had just been jailed for a Scottish Separatist letter-bomb campaign and of course there was the looming anniversary of the Jacobite Rebellion. I used the writing of this piece as a way of working through my own thoughts on the issue, so on a third level, the piece can be seen to represent the Scottish land (constant throughout); and the violent interlude represents the political turbulence of the late ‘80’s/early ‘90’s.
