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Alongside the six Quartettini,
continuing from them, came these adventures in small-scale composition
— relatively rare chez moi earlier, and sometimes seeming
to be "against nature" (fundamentally expansive). The
two commissions of summer 2007 were both for small forces — vocal
sextet (What Can It Be?), wind quintet
(Five
Temperaments) — and
for 10' duration. I chafed and groaned and — with initial
difficulty and final pleasure — obeyed. After the one-and-a-half
hours of the recent Fourth Concerto,
size needed its opposite. After
it, some fifteen pieces, none longer than 10', most shorter,
helped actually extend my range while apparently contracting it. And
after Big and Small, 2008 was for pressing practical reasons a
Gap Year. Perhaps for musical reasons too. The well
was temporarily dry. But the hand was not idle. A project
to transcribe for piano-duet all the Haydn Quartets
not so done in the nineteenth century (great epoch of this domestic
medium) was finished in time for the bicentenary of his death in
2009. Also a further hommage — framing the two movements he completed
of his last quartet op. 103 in music of his own and my own intercombined. |
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