John McCabe

Floraison (The Goddess Triolgy II)

Floraison (literally, 'flowering' or 'blossoming') depicts the flower maiden and love goddess Blodeuwedd (which means 'bloom maiden'), who is also an owl goddess. She was made up of nine kinds of flowers, and in one pagan ritual her husband was sacrificed, ascending after death into the skies in the form of an eagle. This composition is cast in the form of a passacaglia in which there are nine variations, but perhaps more important than this is the initial image behind the piece, which was that of a flower gradually opening and then closing. This image governs the shape of the music, with its increasingly elaborate and intense growth towards its climax and then a return at the close to the opening ideas.