Green Deva, 2021, 8 mins

I brought a sketch of this three-movement string trio to workshop on the COMA Midwinter Composing Course, with Alasdair Nicholson. He later asked me to finish it for the St Magnus International Music Festival, where it was premiered by Hebrides Ensemble at St Magnus Cathedral. In 2023 it was performed again at the Hackney Proms.

Green Deva is inspired by a painting of the same name by my late father, Benjamin Creme. Describing it he wrote: “Deva is the Sanskrit term forAngel. In Esoteric philosophy the devic and human evolutions are separate but closely related. Devas are the ‘active builders’, working intelligently with substance to create the forms of life; the whole of nature is maintained in correct relationship by the devic evolution. Green devas are responsible for the natural world in all its forms and activity.”

The first movement is in part influenced by Indian Classical music and echos the vibrant, fiery green forms in the painting swirling and darting out. It expresses the green devas ‘actively building’, along with the second movement, which also imagines them overseeing the magnetic spots of the earth. 

The last movement, with its use of harmonics and ascending 4-note motif, focuses on the pale centre of the painting — everything branches out from here and returns. I saw this centre as an intense light, forming and formed by all the devic building-activity expressed in the earlier part of the piece. 

Score on request.

Watch the Hebrides Ensemble performing Green Deva as part of its St Magnus Cathedral concert, 13 mins in to the video below.