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Lookup NU author(s): Professor AgustÝn Fernández
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Trio for violin, cello and piano in three movements. 1. Prelude with forebodings, 2. Lullaby with valediction, 3. Finale with bells. This submission should be considered in conjunction with A Hidden Music, which is an orchestral treatment of the same material. The two works illustrate my concern with continuity of narrative across a composer’s output and also between the composer and his predecessors. The works posit the notion that all music is a recomposition of previous music, even where the precedents cannot be recognised. I have woven a web of musical references binding together precedents as far back in time as Bach’s The Art of Fugue and as recent as my works The Wheel (1993), Approaching Melmoth (2000) and A to Z (2001 version). All the references are held together by expressive intentions determined by the circumstances in which the new work was being written, in particular the preparations for the Iraq war and then the outbreak of war. The range of situations being dealt with demanded dramatic contrasts that by the third movement had outgrown the medium of a trio. While the pressure to carry these ideas exercises a salutary exertion on composer and performers alike, the fact remains that Trío alone does not realise the material’s psychological complexities to the full. Hence the need for an expanded version, for whose title a line was borrowed from Franz Tamayo’s celebrated poem Balada de Claribel, in the original Spanish una música escondida. The larger forces enabled a fuller realisation where colours are more varied and more sharply defined, harmonies are clarified, textures are expanded and the violin cadenza at the opening of the third movement is replaced by a more expansive piano cadenza.
Composer(s): Fernández A
Publication type: Musical Composition
Publication status: Published
Year: 2003
Publisher: Trío Apolo
Place Published: Cochabamba, Bolivia
Type of Work: Chamber music
URL: .www.agustinfernandez.com
Notes: Publication details shown refer to the first public performance. Trío Apolo has given several subsequent performances. The work was also performed on 9 July 2006 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, by Cuckson/Gross/Fischer, and on 14 March 2007 at The Sage Gateshead by members of Northern Sinfonia
