Thea Musgrave's Clarinet Concerto

Author(s): Anthony Payne

Source: Tempo, No. 88 (Spring, 1969), pp. 50-51+53
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/943378
Accessed: 29-04-2019 15:36 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Tempo

This content downloaded from 146.95.253.17 on Mon, 29 Apr 2019 15:36:20 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 so TEMPO

tion. These solos are buil

way are cumulative overa
last brass refrain, the wh
combined, and the work
ioned.
Thus the progression of the work is both geometric and circular, for while
each block of material occupies its own clearly defined area, symmetries and
opposites existing within the block take on a wider formal significance when
juxtaposed against other symmetries and opposites. Despite the fact that the work
lacks a linear plot (and without pushing the 'circular' relationships analysis too far)
it has an outstanding unity, for the music is constructed in such a way that each
cell-like rhythmic and melodic shape is projected, so to speak, on to a large
screen which is the 'end' of the piece, containing everything in a sort of total
musical recall. After 27 minutes a resolution, if not a solution, of the materials
is reached.
The verse aspect of the piece speaks for itself-as a 'cool' straight-jacket to
contain the 'hot' sounds-and is the key to the projected title 'signals': the held
notes, pauses, repeated unisons, cadences and 'rhyme endings' serve throughout as
signals for a new musical event to happen, whether it be another verse, a conse-
quent phrase, or a completely new idea. And by extension recurrent refrains
are merely glorified cadences, signals of a more elaborate kind. The formation of a
new and entirely convincing cadential 'language' is one of the most original
features of the score (and Felix Aprahamian would therefore have to find other
irrelevant grounds on which to condemn it).
A similarly important feature, marking a significant advance for Birtwistle,
lies in the mildly indeterminate passages which, seen from a different angle, are
verses to the ritornellos of the completely notated portions. In a discussion with
Michael Tippett at Wardour Castle Summer School some years ago Birtwistle said
that he could rewrite his music using different pitches without doing any damage
to it (hence serial-type analysis, as Roger Smalley attempted in his review of
Nomos in Tempo 86, is futile with Birtwistle's music). 'Verses' contains his first
attempts at this sort of 're-composition', for in the horn and woodwind cadenzas
and the low wind passages, alternative passages or methods of performance are
left to the players or conductor to select, with superb results in the case of the
brass ritornellos, where the use of different mutes and dynamic levels provides
sharply varying shifts of colour on each recurrence.
It seems with this piece that Birtwistle has solved the problem of the over-
elaborate vertical and melismatic density which at times threatened to stifle
Nomos, and on the evidence of the tape part of the 'Interludes' one feels that at
last there is some hope for the cause of poor benighted British electronic music.

Thea Musgrave's Clarinet Concerto

reviewed by Anthony Payne
Thea Musgrave's new Clarinet Concerto' is the second of two recent large-
scale orchestral works which have presented in the most elaborate form a com-
positional style and technique that have occupied her now for several years, and
i Commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society, in association with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and
first performed by Gervase de Peyer with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Colin Davis, at the Royal
Festival Hall on February S I969.

This content downloaded from 146.95.253.17 on Mon, 29 Apr 2019 15:36:20 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 FIRST PERFORMANCES 51

seem to have released the strongest and most charact

of her career. One of the main components in this n
concertante melodic style in which the rhythmic arti
tent to the players. While relinquishing precise comm
score, she controls the harmonic texture at all points
this means all the players engaged in freely notated m
half a dozen or more in both the Clarinet Concerto an
certo for Orchestra) are compelled to come together a
harmonic flow. This enables the composer to notate p
ease in which soloists are playing in different tem
texture of considerable rhythmic complexity while n
with distracting reading problems. It is a system whic
like the Impromptu for flute and oboe, and also in t
Chamber Concerto where it became related to an I
anarchy. Predictably these passages occur at static mo
processes. In them the music ticks over momentously
tension which in both the Clarinet Concerto and the
bursts out into the sections of turbulent dynamism wh
ical goals. The structures of both works are complex
each is a tribute to the composer's intellectual sco
Especially admirable, it seems to me, is the subtly var
ship of static to dynamic which produces in the Conc
crescendo of interest over some twenty minutes of p
longer Clarinet Concerto, with which we are primar
elaborate concerto grosso form, full of cross referenc
The structure is subdivided into ten sections, thou
take the more realistic rondo viewpoint of A (section
A (5) - D/B (6 7 8) - A (9 1o). The main A sections are
also a considerable amount of work for the clarinet
B, C and D are cadenza-like or concertante passages in
mic style predominates. Each of these sections featu
group of wind and brass instruments, and is led by t
several different stations within the orchestra during
facilitate this additional function. The first section (T
erial which will return in all the tuttis and which al
concertante episodes. The main ingredients are rep
outlining in the first bar the important punctuating
restless syncopated cantabile on violins, a variable
quavers or crotchets launched by a quick up-beat sca
brass chords. Towards the end of the section the solo
chromatic ascent, each hesitant, irregularly phrased s
let group of obvious origin. As the solo line comes to
smoothly emerges (Andante lusingando) in which the
concertante group of bassoon, cor anglais, oboe and flu
flowing style on extensions of the up-beat figure. The wh
moving string harmony which emphasises the static
gradual emergence in the solo part of the repeated-no
section (Tempo primo) which is introduced by a note
an instrument so far unheard but destined for an imp
tutti material is now re-worked and redistributed, wi

This content downloaded from 146.95.253.17 on Mon, 29 Apr 2019 15:36:20 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 FIRST PERFORMANCES 53

cluster motive and the continuation on high strings o

slow-moving harmony. This has the effect of consider
tumultuous mood, and is one of many examples in the
large-scale planning. By this mean she avoids anticipati
the tutti material in section five, where a return is ma
of the opening, marking the core of the work. The av
sectionalisation already begins to suggest much broader
become clearer in the fourth section (Quasi improvisan
heat is generated by a concertante group of trumpets,
double bassoon, and bass against the static background
ludes. We can summarise the broad thinking up to th
section five, thus: Section I-assertively dynamic, I
dynamic, IV-increasingly vigorous static; V-assertiv
subtle interplay of different types of tension and relax
development (Prestissimo leggiero) is at first interrupt
the concertante group of clarinet, accordion, alto flut
these are soon carried along on the dynamic flood of th
ped. A further feature is the appearance, sometimes in
ant repeated-note figure, now punched out in crotc
freely notated cadenza material for the complete tutt
percussion and brass fanfares, this incident and the cad
the section providing a further interpenetration of dif
tensions. For the present, however, static gains ascend
enza outbursts check the developing impetus which di
sections VI to VIII (Sensuoso-Sonore poco piud moss
The considerable dynamic energy of the Prestis
indeed necessary, to embark on the longest concertan
The 'Sensuoso', a free arioso for clarinet, vibraphon
right impression of newness after the previous determi
familiar material. As the rest of this sequence of sectio
ually aware of the return of ideas from the transition
while section VIII is varied recapitulation of II.
like, for section IX (Tempo primo), a return to the orig
first section, only this time incorporating an urgent cl
high above the orchestra. The final Prestissimo, sec
developmental features of the central tutti, and caden
B flat, dynamism in the ascendant.
It will have been noticed that little attempt has
melodic or motivic shapes, the bias being towards the
work's broader tensions and relaxations. Although ost
certantante strands seem more geared to the articulat
space, and are of vertical rather than linear significanc
skill her recent music of texture and motion the comp
with the simplest of material. There has even been a da
respect, although the vitality of form continues, which af
eration in such music. It will be interesting, neverthe
composer senses a danger here, and develops by tryin
terful material, perhaps of genuine melodic significance
and memorable structural vision.

This content downloaded from 146.95.253.17 on Mon, 29 Apr 2019 15:36:20 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms