interference

Richard BARRETT
Born 1959, Swansea, Wales

interference (2000)

From DARK MATTER (1998-2001) 10400
contrabass clarinet/voice/pedal bass drum solo

The title of interference refers to the patterns produced by interacting beams of electromagnetic radiation or subatomic particles, as in the famous `two-slit experiment´. This experiment, simple and straightforward in itself, nevertheless has deep and unresolved implications for the nature of physical reality, leading as it does to the mysterious and unanswerable question of what is `really happening´ at the quantum level of space and time.

Such ideas permeate the structure of the composition in various ways. It is also in another sense a work of speculation, in that the contrabass clarinet is itself a relatively `unknown´ instrument, especially in a solo context, bearing in mind the remarkable but isolated contributions of such players as Anthony BRAXTON and Peter van BERGEN. Much of the material evolved out of extensive consultations with Carl ROSMAN, some of whose other abilities suggested the `prosthetic´ extension of the instrument using the player's voice (with a range of four and a half octaves) and a pedal bass drum. Central to my intentions was to discover or develop a `virtuosity´ inherent to the instrument and then extrapolate it to an almost absurd extreme. The musical materials emerge from a confrontation between this expanded instrumentalism and a complex structural network of symmetries and `variations´.

The Latin text of the vocal part is from Lucretius' poem De rerum natura (`On the nature of things´), and describes the sudden and violent destruction of the world, though under what circumstances and for what reasons is unclear, since the crucial lines before the chosen fragment have been lost.

interference was begun in 1996 and completed in February 2000, commissioned by ELISION Ensemble, and is dedicated to Carl ROSMAN. It forms part of DARK MATTER, a 95-minute installation/composition with 18 musicians and electronics, a collaboration with the artist Per Inge BJØRLO, ELISION Ensemble and Cikada Ensemble of Oslo.

Programme note © 2000 Richard BARRETT