Eidyllion – our latest commission

Having been writing intensively to commissions for solo and chamber music works over the past several years, it was lovely to be approached by the Rick Prakhoff to write a piece for the Zelman Symphony Orchestra!

The word “idyll” is from the Greek eidyllion, “‘little picture’, a short poem of a pastoral or rural character in which something of the element of landscape is depicted or suggested.” I wanted to write a work that was predominantly bucolic and soothing in affect, in response to the precarity and volatility of the current times.

For the majority of the piece, which is in one continuous movement, my pastoral scene is an interior imagining: it takes place in the mind, rather than in response to any specific pictorial tableau. That said, one part of Eydillion does recall an actual place. The middle section is an elaborated quote from my Bundanon Sonata for Violin and Piano (2011) – the fourth movement, “Earth Art Could Fall From the Skies”. I composed this work on my fourth Artist Residency at Bundanon, bequeathed to the nation by the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd estate, situated near Nowra, NSW. This movement refers to the plethora of contemporary site-specific artworks around the vast property, not only on the ground but also up in the trees.

The opening theme of Eydillion returns in various guises, one of which affords an obligato piano moment in the spotlight. I wanted to give the sense of travelling through this interior “journey”, time unfolding, terrain – of a non-specified nature – traversed. A triumphant, ecstatic end is presented by the orchestra, in tutti.

Zelman Symphony is grateful to the City of Boroondara (as a part of the 2023-26 Triennial Operational Grant) and to Kathy and George Deutsch for generously funding the composition of Eidyllion for Orchestra by Linda Kouvaras.