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Chamber Concerto

The concerto is an instrumental work that creates contrast between an ensemble and a smaller group or solo instrument, or among various instrumental groups. From its beginnings in the 1680s, this principle has been problematised by two readings of the word ‘concertare’: ‘agreement’ and ‘disputation’. Practices divide between the integrated or ‘ripieno concerto’ approach, and the ‘solo and orchestra’ approach, the latter still discernible in modern orchestral concertos which frequently replicate the principle of the soloist’s display accompanied by a relatively undeveloped orchestral part (e.g. Corigliano Piano Concerto (1968), Salonen Violin Concerto (2009)). There are fine examples of twentieth century integrated orchestral concertos, but these tend to be essentially display pieces (e.g. Bartók Concerto for Orchestra, Robin Holloway Concertos for Orchestra).

A partial answer to this problematic is in a parallel line of development in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Instead of focusing on expansion, such projects returned the concerto to its original chamber scale through processes of concentration and economy. These relatively rare ‘chamber concertos’ include: Berg (1925), Webern (1934), Lutyens (1940), Palmer (1949), Ligeti (1970), Skempton (1995). These constitute a ‘partial’ response because they also display harmonically static qualities arising from particular aesthetic choices and processes related to the form.

My Chamber Concerto recaptures the original concertante principle. I was keen to develop compositional methods which would embrace concerto principles of agreement and contest, while avoiding both display and formulaic approaches to solo and ripieno. I did this through experimental approaches to the clear articulation of harmony and line in a post-tonal setting, and by layering instrumental groups, inspired by the film concept of montage. In finding ways to restore the distinction between line and harmony, dissolved in so much modernist music, I sought to recover the concerto’s founding concern with dramatic relationships between materials and instruments.