Elwin Hendrijanto plays 'The Spot' by Philip O'Meara
2,069 views · Published 30 June 2009 · 2:52 · Indexed 3 October 2026
Channel: PhilipOMeara · 2009 · Music
The Spot was written for a piano composition competition called The Sound of Perfume in conjunction with Clive Christian perfumes (see http://www.thesoundofperfume.com). The idea was that RCM students would be sprayed with three perfumes and then write a piece based on the resultant olfactics. I was designated X, a perfume for which the principal characteristic was passion. Rather than write a sensuous, whole-tone Debussian homage (which would perhaps describe a perfume advert better than the perfume) I instead decided to concentrate on the smell in hand, or on wrist. Thinking more widely about passion, I decided that passion really meant strength of feeling; whether positive or negative. After all, passion is not just about feeling strongly positive, but also strongly negative. Passion can be extremely calm, but extremely violent, extremely trusting but extremely jealous; vehemently tender and overtly capricious. But what all these emotions have in common is the very passion on which this piece is based the central core of caring on which all emotions depend. So the title is not just a weak pun on X marks the spot; but the spot marks that central core of feeling which carries passionate emotions along and fuels them, for better or worse. As if to make a point of managing to avoid cliché parallel whole-tone major thirds, the musical theme for the spot is a pair of parallel whole-tone major thirds...
