Music archive entry

Clarinet Quartet was written in 2001-2002 for the Bedford School Clarinet Quartet whilst I was composer-in-residence (Eileen Norris Fellow) there. The piece was performed many times by them, including a performance at St Martin-in-the-Fields. The third and final movement, marked Molto Allegro, lasts approximately 4 minutes and is written in a broadly neo-classical style that typifies the language of the piece as a whole.

The movement opens with an idea based on written-out turns and repeated quavers. This develops into a series of scalic runs before giving way to a series of episodes characterised by syncopated figures over chugging staccato quavers, a texture which forms the basis of much of the movement. In a sort of coda to the opening section of the movement, the bustling nature of this material is replaced by a more sustained melodic idea which is passed round the quartet over radiant major harmonies.

There then follows a series of sections in which the opening material, chugging quavers and syncopated ideas are developed further, eventually culminating in the climax of the movement, where the sustained material returns over a greatly elaborated texture. A sustained passage, combining the preceding sustained material with staccato ideas, leads to a gradual dissipation of tension, before the opening material makes its final appearance in a short coda.