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Clepsydra for solo oboe, composed in collaboration with Christopher Redgate for the new Redgate-Howarth oboe.

Requested by AHRC Fellow Chris Redgate (http://www.21stcenturyoboe.com), Clepsydra is an exploration of the extended oboe that demonstrates a range of new possibilities afforded by its re-design as the Redgate-Howarth oboe. Alongside pieces by Finnissy, Barrett and Hayden, it is one of a handful of pieces composed for the new oboe at its ‘birth’. The primary innovation of the collaboration is a set of harmonics that can be produced by irregular modification of the low B flat fundamental, found through a search for ways of suppressing the sound of the instrument to access the exquisite timbral range between breath and full tone. The piece proceeds by gradual aggregation of these harmonics, interleaved with passage work incorporating 6th tones, fingered high Bs, and beating multiphonics, which are all specific affordances of the new instrument. The research took place during five collaborative meetings held over 12 months. Prior to its appearance, towards the end of this period (Spring 2012), Redgate's speculation about the capacities and qualities of the new instrument brought a vivid imaginative dimension to the process. This paradoxically stimulated both an overwhelming sense of possibilities generated by a new order of combinatoriality (by adding new keys affording new colour tones, high notes, microtones, multiphonics) at the same time as a primitive, visceral, notion of the instrument and player as a whole system linked by breath. Re this latter image, Empedocles’ ‘Simile of the Clepsydra‘ provided a further imaginative dimension (as well as the title, as described in the programme note - see score). Musicologist Michael Hooper attended the early meetings and reported on the collaborative process in Michael Hooper (2012). Tempo, 66, pp 26-36. doi:10.1017/S0040298212000241 at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8660872.