Sextet: 'In Divers Knottes...' for Clarinet Piano Percussion Violin Viola and Cello. Composed 1998 published 2000. Duration: 16 minutes. This piece has had several working titles thelongest being Asteroceras obtusum (after a coiled fossil found during a summer visit to Lyme Regis) the most cynical RAE III and Flying Starts suggested by a colleague during a conversation about the importance of writing musicthat ?takes off?! I decided on a title that conveyed something o the tangled contrapuntal nature of the piece taken from an extended text by Stephen Hawes (The Historic of Graunde Amoure and la Bell Pucel 1554): With Flora paynted and wrought curiously in divers knottes. With many dragons of marveylos likenes Of divers floures made full craftely By Flora couloured with colours sundrye. The piece isepisodic and is constructed from three principal textures the opening music which introduces the only theme of the piece and which is never heard again in this form the fast and increasingly hectic music which grows as the theeproliferates into several knotted variations of itself and the very slow music which occurs twice as stark contrast to the surrounding material. Written last and within sight of the deadline this music leaves some of thedecisions to the players the last gasps of the composer and the gathering energy within the piece! - Sadie Harrison

für zwei Hörner zwei Violinen Viola und Bass-It is hardly surprising that Beethoven did not write any more chamber music for winds after 1800. Following the change to middle-class musical culture demand declined for buoyant serenades and divertimenti intended for courtcircles – a genre that Beethoven had reservations about as it was. Composed in 1795 with no known occasion in mind his Sextet op. 81b is thus all the more remarkable standing out on account of the unusual virtuosity of thehorn parts. This edition is the first to provide the bass part as originally intended by Beethoven: for violoncello supported by a double bass. In addition to the original horn parts in E flat it also contains transposed parts inF.