The Living Mountain: Music, Mountains and Memories

The Living Mountain: Music, Mountains and Memories transports the listener to the mountains where the words of Nan Shepherd echo through melodic interpretations of the natural world. Ailie Robertson blends harp, string quartet, spoken word and photos to connect identity, memory, place and wonder by create musical soundscapes that are emotive, exciting, haunting, and soulful. 

Even in Scotland, many do not know of Nan Shepherd nor her seminal book The Living Mountain and yet those that discover her slender book are immediately enthralled by these reflections of Scotland's Cairngorm Mountains.  Written during the last years of the Second World War, her book lay unpublished until 1977 and is both a masterpiece of nature writing and a master class in listening to and seeing the landscape based on her experiences of walking in the Cairngorms. It is a world that is breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. 

"… the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain" The Guardian

Inspired by this iconic work, multi-award-winning composer and harpist Ailie Robertson has written a suite of music that explores Nan’s vivid and descriptive prose.  In Music, Mountains and Memories: The Living Mountain, Ailie pays homage to Nan and the Cairngorms through musical compositions describes her vivid images of mountain landscapes in a continuous suite of music, subdivided into 6 movements to reflect chapters from Nan’s book:

·       The Plateau 

·       The Recesses 

·       Water 

·       Frost and Snow 

·       Air and Light 

·       Being 

 "the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him" Nan Shepherd

Fusing field recordings with elements of classical and folk music, Ailie’s compositions explore Nan’s writing, the scenery, and our human connections with nature and wild mountain landscapes. Through melodic interpretations that connect identity, memory, place and wonder at the natural world, Ailie blends clarsach, string quartet and electronics to create musical soundscapes that are emotive, exciting, haunting, and soulful.