Description
This “letter” to my grandmother is a recollection of her final years in the 1970s.
She suffered from Parkinsons and became very frustrated with the fact that her body
simply didn’t follow the commands of her brain. But she was always a very polite, gentle and yet
determined person – others in this situation might have used swear words, but, when she found herself immobilised, my gran would simply shout “Bunny Rabbits!”.
This would make us laugh and she would laugh along with us.
The frustration is represented in the music by the Delians melodic fragment DEFGEDE (in the D Dorian mode)
interrupted by the timpani, and eventually other instruments, repeating the frustrated “bunny rabbits” theme.
Finally – following her Christian beliefs, her soul goes up to an afterlife in which she is released from the frustration and the bunny rabbits, who have a final grumble on brass and timpani and give way to an ethereal minor chord with a major sixth, as suggested by the Dorian mode.
The piece was premiered on 30 January 2016 by the Octava Chamber Orchestra along with various other short movements composed by other members of the Delian Society as part of Delian Suite No 8.