<<  -- 3 --  Robert Hugill    EMOTIONAL CONTOURS

But when Wilson is not taking his cue from others, then 'the experiences I have of life and in life, like so many other people, are the ones I want to inform my music; they provide the common ties between us all, and because of that, I feel they are worth exploring, whether it's concerns about death and what that means, or falling in love, or having to face difficult times -- when the emotional contours of these experiences are distilled out in works of music, I believe that listeners can respond because those contours are common to most of us, even if the source is not explicit.'

In fact he regards his first quartet, Winter's Edge [listen -- 2:44-3:56], as his first complete work, it was 'the first piece for me that had a philosophical reason for existing -- ie it was an expression of how I saw the world and myself in it. Up to that point the music I had been writing was quite abstract and I felt after Winter's Edge that there could be more positive reasons for me to be writing music than simply organising sounds. I found that the expressive qualities of music are the most exciting ones, and so usually I seek to express something tangible in my music.'

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