solace of articulation
(2022-3)
for solo clarinet d’amore and eight virtuoso players
flute/piccolo, bassoon, soprano trombone, percussion, piano, violin, viola, and cello
“…In any case, writing it has filled an hour and brought the solace of articulation…”
—Reprobates, by John Stubbs, p19
Almost from the start I have nursed a conviction that instruments in ensembles should be used even-handedly, spreading the share of the texture and complexity broadly in equal measure across all the players, something I sometimes called “instrumental socialism” – this is long before I came across Grainger’s similarly democratic ideas. To this day I’m not entirely sure why I feel this way; perhaps it is just a temperamental disaffinity with showiness, which leads me to spread the load of difficulty across the entire band. This tendency is clear even in such early pieces as énoncé or the Third Symphony. Concertante writing therefore requires me to go against a very deeply-ingrained instinct, and it is notable that until now I had never essayed such a work, with the single exception of the flute solo line in Lucifer, from Agnî–Prometheus–Lucifer. I cannot deny that every time I complete a large-scale solo work I feel a lingering frustration that it is not the solo line of a piece with ensemble ….but that urge has always struck me as unethical, and I have never acted on the temptation. (I have long tinkered with a potential Piano Concerto, but that’s a completely different notion of rebalancing the ensemble).
There was a time when tiering the difficulty of instrumental lines made sense. Until maybe thirty years ago ensemble players tended not to be very adept in the ‘new music’ so having smaller groups of specialists in the foreground permitted the writing for the remainder of the ensemble to be less tricky. This kind of hierarchialising is apparent in Carter’s Double Concerto and Piano Concerto, or Dutilleux’s Second Symphony. It made sense in the ‘50s and ‘60s not to give inexperienced players challenging and precarious music to negotiate. I recall even in the ‘80s having players who were nominally specialists lecture me on such matters as my piano parts being “unplayable” (a deflecting accusation of incompetence) or my writing for soprano saxophone going against the nature of the instrument because “it was not suited to playing leaps”. I wish I were making this up. So reserving the apparently ‘transcendentally difficult’ material for a soloist or group of soloists was just self-preservation. Happily, over the thirty years since I arrived in Australia players’ familiarity with the demands of the ‘new music’ (and, for that matter, Early Music) has become almost universal, to the point where accomplishment apartheid is quite unnecessary; this is in no small part due to the pioneering efforts of such groups as the Fires of London, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble InterContemporain, ELISION and Libra. Today, my ingrained preference that the musical complexities should be shared equally is an entirely realistic expectation.
Acknowledging such a ubiquitous level of proficiency, then, I find myself revisiting the notion of the ‘soloist’. After writing a solo work, ghosts of motion, for Richard Haynes’ newly developed modern version of the baroque clarinet d’amore, I was struck by the idea of amalgamating his instrument into an ensemble setting as a primary voice. Accomodating such a soloist to my level-playing-field approach led to my viewing the foreground instrument less as an isolated ‘helden-voice’, and more a ‘first among equals’, so when I began work on my concerto for Richard, solace of articulation, I imagined the ensemble parts as being of a close difficulty to that of the clarinet, but less exposed. The description of the work as ‘for solo clarinet d’amore and eight virtuoso players’ makes this explicit. Beyond the shared virtuosity, what particularly characterises the solo part in this new work is the required stamina and rhetorical range, the level of articulacy, and the structural centrality of the clarinet d’amore’s material.
The chosen line-up is that of the ensemble of which Richard is a member, the Ensemble Manufaktur für Aktuelle Musik: flute/piccolo, bassoon, soprano trombone, percussion, piano/melodica, violin, viola, and cello. I have tried to achieve a particularly analytic approach across the entire band, so, just as the winds consist of a single representative of each timbre – one transverse flute, one single reed, one double-reed, one brass – the percussion consists of a single instance of each of a large colouristic range of instruments, from single cowbell to single tomtom. Throughout the work I have used the strings as a ripieno-type ensemble; although there are many individualistic moments, the strings are frequently utilised as a timbral girder. I was particularly interested in the opportunity to use the fabled soprano trombone; having only recently written an extended duet for tenor trombone and percussion, I was keen to use my acquired knowledge in the more rarified context of the smaller instrument. In the ensemble the soprano trombone functions as the clarinet d’amore’s deputy; they frequently play together or antiphonally. A feature of the music that arises directly from its title is a certain incessant, claustrophobic, busyness. The music is uncomfortable with repose; it finds its solace in articulation, not quietude.
Using the string trio and the vibraphone to sustain the musical texture is a conscious homage to the Concerto (‘62-8) of Jean Barraqué, whose music has been both an influence on my work and a benchmark since I first heard it in the late ‘60s.
I’ll allow the Program Note to provide further insight on the piece:
Early on in his historical study Reprobates, John Stubbs writes of a letter that it “is looking for a favour, though even [the author] himself is unsure what form that boon might take. In any case, writing it has filled an hour and brought the solace of articulation; it is sealed and dispatched” (p.19). For my purposes it doesn’t matter who the author is; suffice to say that he is writing 410 years ago this fortnight; he is a gentleman, a Master of Chancery, who has just been swindled out of almost his entire estate. One of his sons is expensively invalid, another is a hunt-following blockhead, and the third is an indiscreet, spendthrift, narcissist who has just been sacked by the letter’s intended recipient. As Stubbs indicates, the author is in despair – the writing of the letter is at least partly therapeutic.
The details and circumstances of the letter are unimportant for this work; it is the notion of forming thoughts into argument as catharsis that is the basic premise of solace of articulation. This experience is doubtless a commonplace, but that does not make it any less consequential for each writer. As with all such processes, digressions and contradictions, hesitations and festinations, and even irrelevancies are part of the pattern.
The clarinet d’amore is, in solace of articulation, the ‘author’ – the prima materia is sloughed-off by the soloist, and the other players then shape it into lines more suited to their instrument. This process does not always happen sequentially; as in all my pieces, time does not operate entirely linearly. The piece falls into three arches, which shorten in the approximate ratio 3:2:1; they could be loosely characterised as impressionist, analytic, and chiasmic; within this general shape, there is a fair amount of unpredictability. In lieu of a major cadenza there is an extended ‘exegetical’ duet for clarinet d’amore and soprano trombone – which may be the very first-ever of its kind – between the analytic and chiasmic sections.
The work was written between October 2022 and May 2023 at the request of Richard Haynes, for himself to perform with Ensemble Manufaktur für Aktuelle Musik.
Please note: the score that appears here is provisional. It will almost certainly undergo change during the rehearsal period, whenever that will be.