Music is usually expressed through movement and dance, however, in her award winning creation, Psalmsong, glass artist and musician Alison Kinnaird has enabled music to dance on glass.

Using lissajous patterns and light mixed with the inspiration of Gaelic psalms she has combined her passion for music with her skills as a glass artist to create a unique and innovative artwork. 

Psalmsong, which is currently on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London at the Tunnel Entrance, has been acknowledged internationally and will next year go on permanent display in the new Scottish Parliament building.  The quality of this piece has also led to her winning the Glass Sellers’ Award 2004. 

The project began when Alison was awarded a Creative Scotland Award from the Scottish Arts Council in 2002.   She started playing the Scottish harp at the age of 14 and her love of traditional music has run parallel with her work as a glass artist.  This award enabled her to follow her desire to explore ways to integrate the glass and the music together right from the beginning.

She had begun her career studying Celtic Studies and Archaeology, which influences both her music and glass, and her starting point for the new piece was to compose a tune inspired by the Gaelic psalms, which led to the name of the piece, Psalmsong.

She played the melody on harp and cello, as well as on glass, quite literally using the sound of the medium itself.  This music was then played into a computer at the Physics Department at Edinburgh University which analysed the notes and produced lissajous patterns derived from the sound waves.   Talking about these patterns Alison says “They reminded me very much of Celtic knotwork, but also of things like DNA spirals, so I found they were really beautiful and inspiring in themselves.” 

She then combined these spirals with the human figure and introduced colour to suggest emotional states by placing slips of dichroic glass under each panel of the engraving and transmitting light through them using optical fibres.

The artwork is over 3 metres long and is composed of 24 overlapping panels.  An unexpected element came when Alison was playing with the optical fibre lighting.  “Suddenly a wonderful shadow came up behind the glass on the wall behind it” she explains.  “My husband Robin Morton suggested that we photograph this shadow and have it printed on a linen banner which now hangs behind the piece.  I think that gives it a new scale and a lot of dignity.

“The two elements of the project can really stand each on their own, you don’t need to see them together, but they do belong together and each adds to the other tremendously.”

The final stage of this project has been the creation of a DVD combining her music with images of Psalmsong and further information about this and her work can be found at www.alisonkinnaird.com   Alison was recognised for her contribution to art and music in 1997 when she was awarded an MBE.

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