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Fixed—in Memoriam Mauricio Kagel

‘Fixed’ for solo violin was composed for performance in Christ Church cathedral, Oxford, in 2010. The premiere took place on 26 May. The piece is dedicated to Harry’s teacher, the German-Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel, who died in 2008. The work lasts for circa 10 minutes, and explores issues of physicality and performance limitation which Harry had begun to interrogate in an earlier work, ‘Restraint’ for handcuffed pianist and electronics (2005). In this present work, the sound of the violin is ‘throttled’ by a scordatura (the violin’s G string is tuned down to a low E), and the imposition of a practice mute. The result is an alienated, ‘denaturalised’ sound that poses particular challenges for both notation and realization. Harry was also interested in the relationship between the piece and the acoustic qualities of its intended performing venue: the cathedral is a large, resonant building, which the physical limitations placed upon the instrument actively work against. The pitch structure of work is based on a process of chord multiplication, derived from Boulez, which Harry uses in other recent works, including ‘My Mother Told Me Not To Stare’.