music

PROGRAM NOTE
I typically write music with fairly involved programmatic intentions along with forms that echo or amplify them. However, I also enjoy music that simply unfolds a process or a ‘conceit’. Fabrication 6: Pretext is a component part of a larger 32-movement cycle for various ensembles ranging from solos and duos to works for orchestra. These Fabrications explore more mechanical approaches to generating music. Each has a subtitle; a synonym of ‘fabrication’ which says something about the piece itself.

This work’s ‘pretext’ is a re-imagining of 10 British pop hits of 1967, variously disfigured, realigned, and dislocated. There is little of each song left beyond one or two principles that makes each of the originals characteristic. They fall into three groups of three and a final single song, each section prefaced by a crisp percussive break masquerading as a program trailer. Interspersed throughout the work are little intrumental 'sprechstimme' tags mimicking the cadence of a BBC Radio One DJ introducing the songs on the first day of the new station's maiden broadcast. 

The speedy pace at which things unfold makes for a rather kaleidoscopic work, and this roadmap may help make its shape clearer:
 DJ announcement
 program trailer
 First Song: after I Feel Free by Cream
 DJ introduction (instrumental sprechstimme)
 Second Song: after From the Underworld by The Herd
 Third Song: after Happy Jack by The Who
 DJ announcement
 •
 program trailer
 Fourth Song: after Flowers in the Rain by The Move
 Fifth Song: after Autumn Almanac by The Kinks
 DJ announcement
 Sixth Song: after Penny Lane by The Beatles
 •
 program trailer
 DJ announcement
 Seventh Song: after Paper Sun by Traffic
 DJ announcement
 Eighth Song: after See Emily Play by Pink Floyd 
 Ninth Song: after Itchycoo Park by The Small Faces
 DJ announcement 
 •
 program trailer
 DJ announcement
 Tenth Song: after We Love You by The Rolling Stones

The music of our own youth is always richly evocative to us, and while these songs could perhaps make other Englishmen born in the 1950s swoon with youthful recollections as much as they do me, they probably won’t do the same for anyone else. “Never underestimate the potency of cheap music”, said Noël Coward, and while these songs which I first heard in the borderland between being a child and a teenager aren’t “cheap” – for me they are indeed potent. 

see also Fabrications