1992

Glasgow underground railway system is a circuit of 15 stations around the city centre. I made the following proposal both to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and to the Executive of Glasgow Subway – that early one Sunday morning, before the trains started running, the orchestra would divide into its various sections. Each of these would then take their places on the platform of a different station. Then, at a given moment, the orchestra and singers would begin to perform Gustav Mahler’s  ‘Das Lied von der Erde’  (‘The Song of the Earth’).

The event would have been well publicised, and because the circuit is quite small, the audience on the platform of each station, as well as hearing their section, would also be able to hear in the distance, the parts played by the sections of the orchestra in the adjacent stations, as the music reverberated along the tunnels.

At the end of the performance, one of the players from each section would get up and place their instrument into an illuminated compartment, specially dug out of the platform for the purpose. A glass lid would then be lowered and locked in place,

Then the trains would have begun to run again, every few minutes keeping a kind of beat in linear time, a pulse around the heart of the city. But the instruments in the glass cabinets would always have remained as a symbol of the morning when the rocks under Glasgow echoed a different tune.