Music archive entry

Keep Yourself Nice is a comedy of manners in music. It toys with the mischievous tension between what we should do and what we want to do. Sit still and be very polite for a few minutes. Remember others can see you.

The most delicate register on the clarinet is the tiny area from the F (written) above middle C to the B flat a perfect 4th above that. Attempting to behave, our quartet stay strictly (if not always meekly) within it.

Movement 1: Keep Yourself Nice The music is built out of 3 different short phrases put together in various contrapuntal combinations punctuated by anxious pauses where the players stop and wonder for a moment if they have gone a bit too far. They succeed in remaining within their most delicate register.

Movement 2: A Rude Itch The tension increases - itching is hard to ignore especially when you become aware of it. The polite music of the 1st movement is reworked as a variation at the same pitch. They are trying to behave. Outbursts of music some much higher, some much lower and at times both break out. These outbursts are all too mocking an imitation of the politeness. They mark shifts in the harmony and are transpositions of the 'polite' chords of the first movement.

Movement 3: A Good Scratch At last a moment when no one can see! The polite original has gone completely and the higher and lower figures have free reign. Harmonically they are the same chords as in the first movement but in a new and much less controlled progression