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Chime, for basset clarinet and piano, Boosey and Hawkes

The research imperatives of the work were derived from the context of its commission – a solo piece for an outstanding virtuoso clarinetist to be included on an album of new works. The research question pursued in the piece is the suppression of stylistic virtuosity in favour of a different ‘virtuosity’ – a radically restraining set of parameters that demand the most extreme technical control but which eschew all flamboyance. Thus the work explores a unique aspect of the clarinet, basset or otherwise: its ability to play at the thinnest edge of dynamic audibility, in addition to exploiting its lower register and subsequently richer timbre. The piano part plays on the idea of ‘negative’ material, a series of repeated chords unfold differently through subtracting notes, a technique which works particularly well in an extremely quiet musical environment. The harmonic language of the work is derived from the clarinet’s unique harmonic series (skipping even numbered partials) and both instruments adopt the role of instigator in generating various chords built out of this process. One brief flamboyant moment aside the musical language is one of restraint. The use of microtonal trills and wide tremolos – idiomatic to the clarinet – give a semblance of movement, but in reality confirm the harmonic stasis being explored, unusually for me, in of much of the music. Commissioned by Mark Simpson: Première: 23 November 2009, Cornerstone Festival, Liverpool. Mark Simpson, basset clarinet, Ian Buckle, piano. Recording: 2010, NMC D139.