SKU: HL.50605317
For Recorder
Quartet. Composed by
Cheryl Frances-Hoad.
Woodwind. Softcover. 56
pages. Duration 300
seconds. Chester Music
#CH88116. Published by
Chester Music
(HL.50605317).
ISBN
9781705177570. UPC:
196288102694. 9.0x12.0
inches.
Pieces of
Light was commissioned by
the Flautadors for their
20th Anniversary. When
the group approached me
about writing a piece, I
had just finished reading
Pieces of Light; The New
Science of Memory by
Charles Fernyhough, and
it struck me that a work
inspired by memories and
how they are created in
our brains would be very
appropriate for a group
of musicians celebrating
such a wonderful
milestone. A quote by
Nabokov in particular
provided ideas for both
the rapid, rhythmic music
that starts and ends the
piece and the slow,
'light-filled' chords of
the middle section: [In
Nabokov's autobiography,
Speak, Memory, he sees]
'the awakening of
consciousness as a series
of spaced flashes, with
the intervals between
them gradually
diminishing until bright
blocks of perception are
formed, affording memory
a slippery hold.' In
addition, this work has
really been shaped by the
recorders themselves:
before writing, I spent
several hours with Ian
Wilson (a member of the
group) learning about the
myriad different types of
instrument I could write
for. The renaissance
instruments particularly
appealed due to their
fabulous timbre, despite
the fact that, due to
their open hole design,
diatonic music works much
better than anything
chromatic. I became
rather obsessed with the
idea of writing chromatic
music for diatonic
instruments, and so in
this piece I use
recorders at both modern
(A440) and baroque (A415,
a semi-tone lower) pitch.
This allowed me to write
a piece that uses all
twelve semitones of the
scale throughout, whilst
never writing a note for
any individual recorder
that falls outside its
particular diatonic major
scale: a compositional
device that pleased me
greatly!-Cheryl
Frances-Hoad, 2019.
Ken Stone
