Written in 1986, Shining Cold is a haunting vocalise exploring the different sonorities of the high soprano voice, strings (viola and cello) and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument best known for its role in Messiaen’s Turangalîla symphony. It was premiered along with Ailsa Dixon’s Nocturnal Scherzo for string quartet at the Little Missenden Festival in 1986, by members of the Brindisi Quartet, with soprano Sally Harrison, and Cynthia Millar, Britain’s foremost classical performer on the ondes Martenot. The composer’s programme note for the first performance explains the ideas behind this intriguing piece:

In ancient languages such as Greek and Hebrew one word can be used for a) breath, b) wind, and c) spirit. The three intermingle in this piece. A questioning spirit inhabits particularly the upper parts, the Ondes seeming more disembodied than the voice, its mortal, sighing ‘sister’. If there is any answer, it is borne on the wind, as fragmentary sounds from another world, or in the piercing light which at moments illuminates this winter landscape.

A note accompanying the manuscript scores for this and the Nocturnal Scherzo sheds some light on her compositional method:

It seems to me that no music is truly abstract. Pieces which have no words or ‘programme’ must be a condensation either of past experience or of processes going on in the psyche. When I write music intended to be abstract, an exposition of the main themes materialises before I feel any need to question what I am writing. Then I find it difficult to continue until I have asked myself what the themes seem to signify. Dream-like images emerge in my mind, and from that part of the process develop the ideas of how to use the themes.

In this piece, the wintry landscape and the ideas of breath, wind and spirit provide an atmospheric imaginative world in which Ailsa Dixon creates a unique soundscape. Lucy Cox, the soprano on the 2025 recording, comments that the piece deploys ‘the whole instrument’ of the soprano voice, from soaring high notes to low chest voice. In places the voice imitates the ondes Martenot with its swooping glissandi, while the ondes part deploys the full range of the instrument’s sonorities and speakers, including the deep reverberation of the gong, the ‘palme’ with its resonating strings, and eerie, impish staccato high notes. This score was digitised and edited by the French women composers project ComposHer, with specialist input on the ondes Martenot part from Professor Nadia Ratsimandresy of the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatoire in Paris. © Josie Dixon (please credit if using this programme note) This work is featured on The Spirit of Love: Chamber Music by Ailsa Dixon by The Villiers Quartet, released on Resonus Classics, 22 August 2025.