Shadowy Fish Christian Mason

Titel / Title: Shadowy fish
Untertitel / Subtitle: Hommage à Schubert
Ausgaben-Titel:
Kurzbesetzung: Vl,Va,Vc,Kb,Klav
Besetzung (ausführlich):
Besetzung / Instrumentation:Klavierquintett
Erscheinungsdatum / Date of Production: 2020
Dauer / Duration: 15'
Epoche: Musik (nach 1945) / Neue Musik (nach 2000)
Gattung:
Produkttyp / Product: Noten
Produkttyp / Product: Partitur und Stimmen
Ausgaben Besetzung:
Herausgeber:
Sprache / Language:
Bindung: geheftet
Format: 23 x 30,5 cm / 9 x 12 in

Uraufführung: Aix-en-Provence, 16. Oktober 2020 Auftrag des Grand Théâtre de Provence Aix-en-Provence

One of my favourite pieces of music as a child - and I still love it - was Schubert's Trout Quintet. It was partly the wonderful music, of course, so light-hearted and joyful on the surface, yet with twists and turns and murky depths of feeling too. But I also liked the picture of a trout on the album sleeve - such beautiful creatures! Last year, while resident at the Villa Concordia in Bamberg, as I took daily walks along the Regnitz river, I observed the trouts as they calmly hovered and swayed in the shallows But if they felt my shadow they were gone in a split second! If you ever get a chance to look closely at brown trout you see that they are covered in myriad brown/red spots of varied sizes; camouflage I suppose. Now those patterns seem to be mixing in my mind with the shifting colours of the spectral arpeggios that flow through this little piece. It's a watery piece, with rippling waves, shimmering surfaces and textural veils around the melodies which flow through it. But it also takes inspiration (and it's title) from a Pablo Neruda poem: the third stanza of Every Day You Play includes the line The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. There's no singer, but I imagine an invisible or imaginary voice somewhere behind (or beyond) the music, and so the score includes a melodic setting of the text. Even though this is not performed by a voice, the melody is always played by the ensemble - especially high register cello - making the piece something like the inverse of a song without words. (Christian Mason)

Untertitel / Subtitle: Hommage à Schubert
Kurzbesetzung: Vl,Va,Vc,Kb,Klav
Schwerpunkt: Kammermusik
Besetzungsrubrik: Kammermusik gemischt
Besetzung Detail: Klavierquintett
Kompositionsjahr / Year of Composition: 2020
Epoche: Neue Musik (nach 1945) / Neue Musik (nach 2000)
Produktart: Noten
Ausgabe: Partitur und Stimmen
Format: 0 x 0 cm / 0 x 0 in
Uraufführung: Aix-en-Provence, 16. Oktober 2020Auftrag von Renaud Capucon
One of my favourite pieces of music as a child - and I still love it - was Schubert's Trout Quintet. It was partly the wonderful music, of course, so light-hearted and joyful on the surface, yet with twists and turns and murky depths of feeling too. But I also liked the picture of a trout on the album sleeve - such beautiful creatures! Last year, while resident at the Villa Concordia in Bamberg, as I took daily walks along the Regnitz river, I observed the trout as they calmly hovered and swayed in the shallows… But if they felt my shadow they were gone in a split second! If you ever get a chance to look closely at brown trout you see that they are covered in myriad brown/red spots of varied sizes; camouflage I suppose. Now those patterns seem to be mixing in my mind with the shifting colours of the spectral arpeggios that flow through this little piece. It's a watery piece, with rippling waves, shimmering surfaces and textural veils around the melodies which flow through it. But it also takes inspiration (and it's title) from a Pablo Neruda poem: the third stanza of Every Day You Play includes the line The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. There's no singer, but I imagine an invisible or imaginary voice somewhere behind (or beyond) the music, and so the score includes a melodic setting of the text. Even though this is not performed by a voice, the melody is always played by the ensemble - especially high register cello - making the piece something like the inverse of a song without words. (Christian Mason)