inward

Richard BARRETT
Born 1959, Swansea, Wales

inward (1995)

From Opening of the Mouth (1992-97) 10800
flute, amplified percussion
Published by United Music Publishers

inward for flute and percussion (with amplification and lighting) was begun in 1994 and completed in October 1995. It forms the (chronologically) central element of Opening of the Mouth, an extended work (in collaboration with the artist Crow) for voices, instruments and electronics, which will receive its first performance in early 1997 with ELISION Ensemble.

While Opening of the Mouth largely consists of complex interpenetrations between several simultaneous musical layers (as a further development of the increasingly interwoven simultaneities to be found in negatives (1988-93) for nine instruments, Vanity (1990-4) for orchestra and ruin (1985-95) for six spatially-disposed instrumental trios), inward is as it were `unaccompanied´ in that larger context, or nearly so; it represents a kind of implosion, or introspection, an island of precarious calm within the surrounding turbulence.

On the subject of interrelationships, inward might also be seen as a pale, diaphanous reflection of the wind-instrument/percussion confrontation of EARTH (1987-8). With inward a window is opened onto a music of intimate discourse, with itself, with the too-much of everything else, with an endlessly compulsive search for (?), through the medium of a sounding tube which modulates and extrapolates a tenuous vocalisation: the flute as ein Fleisch mit der Nacht, "one flesh with the night" (Paul CELAN), the percussion as a backdrop of shadows cast by an unseen (unheard) external presence.

Programme note © 1995 Richard BARRETT