DARKNESS MOVES

Commissioned by the Borletti Buitoni Trust and dedicated to Franco and Ilaria Borletti Buitoni, this is my first piece for solo clarinet.

You can watch the video here.

And interview of me talking about the piece here

You can buy the work from the Boosey and Hawkes website here

Here is a programme note:

COMPOSER’S NOTE

The poetry of Henri Michaux is a truly visceral, oftentimes frightening, even euphoric experience. Bodies are contorted, dismembered, writhing; and thoughts of dark, nightmarish images invite you to the furthest extremities of the human imagination. I wanted to try and capture the essence of this musically.

The work falls into two large sections. The first is other-worldly, slow, undulating, slimy and dirty. It uses fractured melodies and glissandos that don’t seem to quite ever take shape and are distorted by outbursts leading to wild, nightmarish hyperactive wails and screams.

The second part is fleeting, hurried and blurred. It ends in a brutal, but ultimately euphoric climax that gradually and quite suddenly decays into the ether, almost as if the whole experience itself were some kind of dream or hallucination.