Butterfly
Butterfly started life with a very different intent! I originally wrote it after visiting the National Trust property Batemans – the home of Rudyard Kipling.
Kipling’s most famous poem is probably If – and there was a line that made me think about how precious life is, and how we need to make the most of every minute:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
Rudyard Kipling, IF
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
My original idea was to write a piece of music to be played in exactly 60 seconds – and I called it The Unrelenting Minute. But two things changed this – firstly I found that I couldn’t play the piece I’d written at the speed needed to reach my 60 second deadline; and then I realised that it was better when played quite a lot slower….
And this was confirmed when I played it to Elaine and she said it gave her the image of a Butterfly.
Butterfly – sheet music
Sheet music available here for FREE PDF download. Can you play it in 60 seconds? Or do you prefer the slower interpretation?