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Etruscan Games

This work was commissioned by Gerry Mattock and Beryl Calver-Jones in 2007 for the Da Vinci Trio, and was premiered by them in Glasgow University in March 2008. It has subsequently been performed around the UK by both Fidelio Trio and Lawson Trio, and appeared on CD played by Fidelio Trio in 2012.

Like my other submissions this work is concerned with formal narratives in a multi-movement work, but it has a unique position in that the challenge I sought to resolve arose from an outside premise: the commissioners proposed the overall layout, that three short movements would give prominence to successive trio members in short ‘profiles’, before a recapitulatory finale drew their elements together. In accepting this principle I sought to diversify the three instrumental characters (i-piano, ii-violin, iii-cello) as much as possible via their materials and expressive terrains; it happened that the ordering of these states led to a familiar progression akin to ‘1st movement – scherzo – slow movement’ but this was secondary, being a product of the thinking about instrumental characters that was central.

The other research aspect entailed by the above concept was the need in the finale for ‘revisitings’ – refracted or recollected versions of earlier materials. These attempt a balance between recognition and recomposition, so that for example the opening of movement iv has a sibling resemblance to movement i, being at the same time a variation upon its materials. Equally challenging was that (following the revisitings) the climactic phase of this, the large movement of the work, would roll together simultaneous elements of the three pieces in a counterpoint of ideas.