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Work


eight pieces for wind quartet

for wind quartet

Year:  2010   ·  Duration:  9m
Instrumentation:  flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon

Year:  2010
Duration:  9m
Instrumentation  flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon

Alex Taylor
Composer

Composer:   Alex Taylor

Films, Audio & Samples

Sample Score

Sample: Page 1 to 4 and 14 to 17

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About

eight pieces for wind quartet was inspired by Ligeti’s extraordinary, dramatic work Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet, and my eight pieces uses this work as a model, where movements alternate between slow-moving, cloud-like textures and jittery, virtuosic interjections. The fragments of melody are constantly reaching outwards, the tense, at times nightmarish, harmonic language constantly straining, edging towards the elusive octave. Within the twelve-tone framework I wanted to create as much diversity and flexibility as possible, always keeping a tension between motion and stasis. Each piece is a kind of elaboration of the same melodic idea, a blueprint that is constructed differently each time, like seemingly unrelated episodes in a dream. Below is a short poem that I think embodies the miniature nature of each piece and the work as a whole.

miniature

if a dream came to you you might catch it, hold it, sculpt from it an elaborate

memory, the husk of a rushed feeling, the miniature interior of a moment

  • alex taylor

Commissioned note

Written for Ben Hoadley, for the New Zealand Music for Woodwind concert, April 7 2010

Ben Hoadley


Contents note

I. Adagio
II. Molto calmo e sostenuto
III. Con forza (e senza delicatezza)
IV. Calmo
V. Energico ridiculoso
VI. Lontano e bizarro
VII. A cute little interlude
VIII. Turbulent, con rubato


Performance history