Images is a cycle of piano pieces composed by Howard Skempton

Howard Skempton

Howard Skempton is a British composer and accordionist. Since the late 1960s, when he helped organize the Scratch Orchestra, he has been associated with the English school of experimental music...

 in 1989. This work and a variations set, The Durham Strike, are the only large-scale piano works by Skempton, although he has been composing piano music since the beginning of his career.

The work was commissioned by Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

's HTV West

HTV

HTV, now legally known as ITV Wales & West, is the ITV contractor for Wales and the West of England, which operated from studios in Cardiff and Bristol. The company provided commercial television for the dual-region 'Wales and West' franchise, which it won from TWW in 1968...

 for "Images", a six-part television series of documentaries

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 dealing with various aspects of photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

. The series was created to mark the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography. The producer, Barrie Gavin

Barrie Gavin

-Early years:He studied history at the University of Cambridge from 1954 to 1957.He joined the BBC as an assistant film editor in 1961. With the opening of BBC Two in 1964 he began to direct principally programmes about music....

, wanted the music to be similar in concept to Erik Satie

Erik Satie

Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...

's Gymnopedies: in the words of the composer, the pieces were to be "like a sculpture viewed from different angles in a changing light." The pianist who performed Images for the TV series was Michael Finnissy

Michael Finnissy

Michael Finnissy is an English composer and pianist. His music is characterised by the range of extremes often found in his work; opposing binary structures are found commonly, often seen as juxtaposing textures, register and tempi...

.

Images comprises eight preludes, two "songs" (The Cockfight: a traditional song and Song 2), a set of variations, eight interludes and a postlude (Postlude: The Keel Row). In concert, the order of the pieces is not fixed and is left for the performer to determine. The eight preludes contain the pieces that directly correspond to Gavin's request. Preludes 1–3, all written on three staves

Staff (music)

In standard Western musical notation, the staff, or stave, is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch—or, in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending upon the intended effect,...

 and in 3/8 time

Time signature

The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....

, share identical rhythmic and melodic structure of all melodic lines, with just some of the notes and the key

Key (music)

In music theory, the term key is used in many different and sometimes contradictory ways. A common use is to speak of music as being "in" a specific key, such as in the key of C major or in the key of F-sharp. Sometimes the terms "major" or "minor" are appended, as in the key of A minor or in the...

changed. Prelude 4 is also in 3/8 time and has a somewhat similar rhythmic structure, slightly simplified and written on two staves. The other four preludes form two pairs of such almost identical pieces. Preludes 5 and 6 are both in 7/16 time, and 7 and 8 are in 6/16.

The eight interludes were composed with specific scenes in mind and range from 18 to just 8 bars. Numbers 3, 5 and 8 employ free notation: there are no barlines, and the notes have no stems; note values are uniform throughout.