Falling to Earth

Lessons from trees: 3. Becoming

Falling to Earth for string orchestra, harp and piano ¹

This is a demo recording of the first track on my upcoming album I Stand Silent | Six meditations on the life of trees. Orchestral music for meditation and contemplation.

Track listing

1. Falling to Earth

2. Toward the Light

3. Resilience

4. Among Giants

5. A World Beneath

6. The Wisdom of Trees

The track order follows the life cycle of a tree. A seed Falling to Earth, the seedling striving Toward the Light, the battle against the elements and the Resilience to survive as a sapling Among Giants, aided by an underground network of fungi and bacteria in A World Beneath; finally reaching maturity as an elder of the forest, The Wisdom of Trees.

Find out more here…

The Wisdom of Trees

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Becoming

Author Kurt Vonnegut wrote the following to a group of high school students;

Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

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Which came first: the seed or the tree?

Falling to Earth captures the feeling of a tiny seed floating from the forest canopy to the forest floor. The beginning of a life. A leap of faith into the unknown. From the light above to the shadows below. Here it will struggle for survival. Activated by moisture and fed by the soil, it strives to transform from seed to tree.

The seed is used as a tried-and-true metaphor for potential growth and latent creativity. And for good reason. Very few ideas come fully formed. Most begin with an inkling, a phrase, an image, a passing thought, a hint of a melody or a lyric. The rest is a fight for the survival and development of this seed into something tangible.

The music

This piece of music began that way. Four notes.

An ascending melody for a piece called Falling to Earth seemed counter-intuitive. But I chose to go with it. To see where it would take me. I visualised a seed drifting from high above, almost weightless. My task was to impart this sensation into the music.

These four notes repeat over and over at the beginning of the piece, like the genetic information within a seed, wrestling to reveal its true nature. (I soon realised that this ascending melody helped to achieve the feeling of weightlessness I was hoping for.)

The music pauses, suspended in time. A descending scale emerges from the piano and harp and the tempo gradually increases. A free-flowing interweaving and cascading of notes introduces the solo violin as the seed glides towards its destination.

The anticipation builds until, in a moment of stillness, the seed touches gently on the forest floor. The next chapter of its transformation begun.

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I fell to the earth
A tiny seed
Five hundred years ago
Struggling and striving
To grow straight and strong
Here in my mountain forest home

Lyrics from Giant of the Forest, my song about the 100-metre-tall Centurion Tree, a Eucalyptus regnans in lutruwita/Tasmania, Australia.

photograph by Glyn Lehmann

Eucalyptus regnans

• tallest flowering plant in the world

• second tallest species

• seeds are only 2mm long

• can live for several hundred years

• the seeds needs fire for regeneration

• stores more carbon than any other forest known

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By Nature | Waiting

A seed
dormant
waiting 
to become;
awakened

Know the score: Falling to Earth

1. Thanks to Kmeel.com (tree video) and TheMarcKnight (forest floor video).