Output details

Some of its Parts : for violin and/or piano and/or percussion and fixed sounds

In Some of its Parts I am investigating ‘modular composition’ – specifically, the extent to which a single ‘tape part’ can work successfully with any combination of live violin, piano and percussion and whether they all remain ‘the same piece.’ Seven different versions are thus possible (three solos, three duos and the full trio); I have now ruled out, with some regret, the intriguing possibility of acousmatic-only and instrument-only versions as unfeasible. The violin version has been performed in the UK and overseas and is being recorded for CD release.

This project began conventionally enough, when violinist Darragh Morgan asked me to write him a piece. Whilst developing material for this work, I became increasingly aware of the noisy, percussive nature of some of the material; a later request from percussionist Simon Limbrick for a piece with electronics caused me to link the two things in my mind. When, later still, I heard pianist Xenia Pestova performing works for piano and electronics, the full extent of the scope of the Some of its Parts project started to come into focus.

The performers are required to interact with their instruments in a number of ways, employing a variety of ‘extended techniques’. Echoing this, the material in the tape/computer/electronics part is primarily drawn from non-standard ways of playing strings, piano and percussion, together with a selection of materials (springs, creaking doors and shutters, wooden floors, curtain rings sliding along a wooden pole) related to the live instruments – either purely sonically and/or by the elements used to build the instruments concerned (wood, metal, etc) and/or by the physical principles contributing to their character (tension, friction, pressure, etc). The resulting sound world is thus a hybridised, unreal place – but it is hopefully also ‘more than the sum of its parts.’