joined_at_the_hip
9/11/05 for flute, clarinet, electric bass and djun-djuns (African drums)
Composer's note
The given ensemble seems to be two pairs of instruments; the flute and clarinet ‘classical’, the percussion and bass world/jazz/rock. So, force the latter into the classical mold, or vice versa?
Neither; worlds collide. The djun-djun shapes the piece, a polyrhythmic pattern inside a puzzle of variations. The bass line is strung between ‘cadential’ pillars in the djun-djun part.
The winds have distorted classical gestures, further munged by having the transposing clarinet share a part with the concert pitch flute. A metanarrative (‘The History of Classical Music’) is distrusted (√), with obscured quotations (√) from the repertoire.
Notes
This was written for the Research Students Conference of the Royal Music Association at Leeds University in January 2006, and first performed there on 6/1/06 by the ensemble FOCAM. This conference was notable for two other things; I gave a presentation on The Cave of Destiny as part of a session on 'collaborative projects', and, perhaps more significantly, a very interesting keynote speech by the film composer Adrian Sutton which really got me thinking about composition as a service rather than a product.Duration ~5'00
