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A Very Serious Game for ensemble (14 players)

Whalley, R. A Very Serious Game for ensemble (14 players). 2012. Published by Composers Edition, iii + 55 pages. Duration 12 mins. Commissioned by Ensemble 10/10 and performed by them in Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool on 7.3.2012, and at the RNCM on 9.3.2012. Recorded by Ensemble 10/10 for Prima Facie on ASC Records (‘A Feast for the Senses: Music by Richard Whalley’ – PFCD014), released October 2012.

Taking three prints by M.C. Escher as an inspiration for musical process, the two principal areas of focus in this work are layering and transition.

Regarding the former, research encompassed studying scores of music of divergent idioms, but primarily on Sibelius and Nancarrow. In Sibelius’s music profound structural implications arise as a result of how layers of sound behave, whereas in that of Nancarrow the degree of autonomy between behaviour of various layers is often pushed to an extreme level. In this work, layering is not only used to conceive novel textures, but to shape the form (especially of movements I and II), given that individual layers often carve out simultaneously different trajectories through time. The consequences of this for musical composition are significant, facilitating the evolution of a dynamic approach to form, based upon the interaction or refusal to interact between layers.

Regarding transition, this work is informed by study of works by Murail (Treize Coulours) and Grisey (Périodes), in which smooth transitions from one state to another take place over a given period of time. The principal innovation here is the focus on the relationship between different types of transition: linear versus non-linear, systematic versus intuitive, etc. Consequently the approaches to transition in each of the three movements contrast markedly, with a repertoire of transitional techniques shaping the structure of each movement to different degrees.