Rory Boyle: Three Faces in the Crowd (Piano Trio No.3) [score and parts - download]

“When The Rembrandt Trio commissioned me to write a work for them based on the famous painting The Night Watch, I was delighted at the prospect of renewing my acquaintance with a masterpiece I had first seen, and was captivated by, when I was a 10 year-old visiting Holland with my mother and sister in 1961. However, I soon realised that I would never be able to make a direct musical description of such an iconic picture and therefore would have to find another way to satisfy the request of the commissioners. As everyone will know, this painting represents the ultimate crowd scene, with a huge number of people gazing out from the canvas – a few of them are known but most are simply faces incorporated into a very large huddle of activity. I wondered what the character of these unknown people was like and so I decided to take three faces and compose a sort of imagined musical portrait of each in a three-movement work. It would seem that I might be a hostage to fortune if I established which faces I had chosen, since my fictional musical representation would probably only disappoint, and so I regard this as my very own Enigma moment and will never divulge which faces I have used. The three movements are marked respectively Enigmatico (enigmatic), Birichino (mischevious), and Riflessivo (reflective) which may (or may not!) give a clue to the face in question.” - Rory Boyle 2017

Duration: c. 17 minutes