Guitar (Guitar)
SKU:
HL.48024601
Construction with
Guitar Player Including
Guitar and White
Hand. Composed by
Harrison Birtwistle.
Edited by Julian Bream.
Boosey & Hawkes Chamber
Music. Classical.
Softcover. 24 pages.
Boosey & Hawkes
#M060131042. Published by
Boosey & Hawkes
(HL.48024601).
ISBN
9781540050663. UPC:
888680933807. 9.0x12.0
inches.
Beyond the
White Hand: Construction
with Guitar Player, was
commissioned by the
Julian Bream Trust and
first performed at St
John's Smith Square by
Andrey Lebedev in 2014.
This substantial addition
to the advanced solo
guitar repertoire
reflects and expands upon
an earlier miniature from
2007: Guitar and White
Hand, BirtwistleÂ’s
first piece for the
instrument. Both pieces
draw artistic inspiration
from the artist Pablo
Picasso: the smaller
piece written for Forbes
Henderson and sharing a
title with the 1927
painting of the same
name. The larger piece
was composed in the
centenary year of
Picasso's Construction
with Guitar Player after
which the piece is named
and the sculpture
Guitar.Picasso made about
a dozen 'sculptural'
constructionsÂ’ during
1912-1914, many of which
employ recycled or carved
elements. A good number
of these were destroyed
and only one, Still Life
was shown publically
during his lifetime.
Picasso's own
Construction with Guitar
Player was an
installation of a
partially drawn and
painted figure to which
he added arms made of
newspaper that fold away
from the wall to embrace
a real guitar. In the
foreground stands a table
with a bottle of wine and
this was photographed by
Picassoin his studio in
1913. Musically,
BirtwistleÂ’s
Construction is a large
scale, dense work of
sixteen minutesÂ’
duration. It does not
develop linearly, but
presents fragments of
detail, interruptions,
digressions and loops as
a “deconstructed
guitar†in
sound.