Tuireadh

Tuireadh is Gaelic for a lament (or requiem) for the dead, and this work is dedicated to the victims of the Piper Alpha disaster and their families. On the evening of 6 July 1988 a fire broke out on the Piper Alpha off-shore oil and gas platform located in the North Sea. The fire was uncontrollable and evacuation plans inadequate, and as a result many men died and others had to be rescued from the sea. The composer comments that he was specifically inspired by a letter he received from the mother of one of the dead men in which she wrote movingly of her visit to the scene for a memorial service. The ceremony became a rite of passage for those whose loved ones had not been found, and the mother described how a spontaneous keening sound rose gently from the mourners assembled on the boat. Tuireadh attempts to capture this outpouring of grief in music and makes allusions to the intervallic and ornamental archetypes of various lament-forms from Scottish traditional music.