Labyrinths for prepared piano and harpsichord/clavichord
Roger Redgate · 2008
Labyrinths for prepared piano and harpsichord was commissioned by Kate Ryder and Jane Chapman, who gave the first performance in the BMIC Cutting Edge Series on 26th October 2006. Subsequent performances: UC Berkeley, California; Corsham Festival, UK. The work divides into four movements, which are related in terms of formal shape, duration and materials. The brief for this commission was to write for the preparation used by Cage in Sonatas and Interludes for the middle three octaves of the piano. I was struck by both the similarity and considerable difference between these two instruments, which I was interested in exploring on a timbral level. One instrument is from the Baroque era, with all the associations that evokes, and the other is a uniquely 20th-century instrument. However, the use of preparations creates unexpected relationships between the two instruments. The dynamic range of the prepared piano is similar to that of the harpsichord, and the keyboard technique becomes rather more restricted and comparable. Each of the movements revisits the initial material, which is re-defined, both in terms of compositional techniques of transformation, but more interestingly, by projection onto the different instruments. Some materials are conceived in terms of their physical performance on the keyboard, which when articulated on each instrument are transformed. In some passages, notably in movement two, the same materials are executed and combined, with significantly different timbral results.