Cosmos, Earth & Subterranea Part III
When playing this improvised piece of music, I was inspired by imagery of the almost magical nature of a twilit garden, and the Purkinje effect — which is where in low light, blues and greens appear more vivid, and reds appear darker, due to the differing sensitivity of rods and cones in the human eye. In daylight, the colour-sensitive cones are more active, but in low light, the light-sensitive rods start to take over, which means colours towards the red end of the spectrum start to appear to lose their colour, sometimes appearing almost black, while colours toward the higher frequency end of the spectrum are still visible to the rods, making them appear to glow by comparison. I remembered how when I first started gardening as a young adult, at dusk I noticed that the blue flowers I planted often seemed to glow with an otherworldly, magical luminosity. Another source of inspiration was a fairytale-like “sunken garden” I encountered as a young child. This secretive, mysterious scenery captured my child-imagination, and was later echoed in my adulthood when seeing that shift into the Purkinje effect, where the hidden things finally glow as the light levels sink lower and lower. As well as describing the phenomenon of a change in colour perception due to dropping light levels, the Purkinje effect or Purkinje shift can also symbolise the idea of how our perception of reality changes depending on context. It also echoes the idea of the descent into our inner world — from daytime consciousness to dreaming/intuition, and what lies beneath awareness. Mother Nature seems to embody so many human experiences like that. This piece was a way to conclude my Cosmos, Earth and Subterranea Trilogy — Mother Nature is the entity that connects the stars to the soil and the hidden things that glow beneath.
I started in F harmonic minor, and, after an initial sequence of fast broken triads in the upper register, this opening section was very slow, sorrowful and somber, representing the gravity of the descent from daylight consciousness to twilight dream imagery.
Then, using chord V of F minor (a C chord) as a pivot chord, I modulated to B flat Lydian dominant — an otherworldly and unsettled sounding mode with brightness due to its Lydian sharpened 4th, echoing the luminosity of the blue flowers at dusk. The darkness of the flattened 7th echoes the falling light at dusk.
Then I briefly moved through F Phrygian — the Phrygian mode is dark, representing the further drop in light as night continues to close in.
F Phrygian shares the same parent scale as E flat Dorian, which allowed a natural modulation, giving the effect of hearing the same set of notes but with a different tonal centre and character. This echoes the idea of the Purkinje effect changing one’s perception of the same colours, or the idea of our perception of reality being altered by different perspectives.
The Dorian mode has glimmers of light due to its major 6th degree, despite its melancholy and shadowed minor 3rd. This pairing of F Phrygian and E flat Dorian felt like mystery and cautious wonder combined — seeing the fleeting magic of the glowing blues and greens under the Purkinje shift, within the uncertainty of the fast fading light, knowing all visibility will soon be gone, like a black curtain coming down.
I modulated back through B flat Lydian dominant, where more otherworldly magic resides, to the mournful F harmonic minor again.
The piece closes with an imperfect authentic cadence (Vc to i). In classical harmony, a perfect cadence requires the stability of root-position chords, but here I chose to end with the dominant chord (V) in second inversion (C/G). By placing the 5th of the chord (G of a C chord) in the bass, the bass-line has a gentler stepwise movement, and the resolution to the tonic triad (Fm) feels less like a final locking of a door, and more like gently pulling it to. It mirrors the Purkinje threshold—that delicate moment where the light hasn’t fully vanished, and the sunken garden’s honeysuckle-vines of the past remain hanging, unresolved but present, their multiple stems entangled, their intoxicating scent filling the twilight air.
Modes / Scales – Notes and Parent Scales
| Scale / Mode | Notes | Parent Scale | Mode Degree |
|---|---|---|---|
| F harmonic minor | F – G – A♭ – B♭ – C – D♭ – E♮ | — (parent scale itself) | 1st mode of harmonic minor |
| B♭ Lydian Dominant | B♭ – C – D – E – F – G – A♭ | F melodic minor (ascending) | 4th mode of melodic minor |
| F Phrygian | F – G♭ – A♭ – B♭ – C – D♭ – E♭ | D♭ major | 3rd mode of major |
| E♭ Dorian | E♭ – F – G♭ – A♭ – B♭ – C – D♭ | D♭ major | 2nd mode of major |
Interval Formulas
F harmonic minor
1 – 2 – ♭3 – 4 – 5 – ♭6 – 7
B♭ Lydian Dominant
1 – 2 – 3 – ♯4 – 5 – 6 – ♭7
F Phrygian
1 – ♭2 – ♭3 – 4 – 5 – ♭6 – ♭7
E♭ Dorian
1 – 2 – ♭3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – ♭7
Further Reading and Listening
Learn more about modes: Complete Guide to Modes of the Major, Melodic Minor, and Harmonic Minor Scales
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