Description

Fragments is in one extended movement featuring musical and technical challenges for each player. It features a rhythmic drive and momentum, whilst exploring a wealth …of colours and timbres, creating an engaging and evocative work with much to say during its brief timespan. Fragments is composed for double bass in Orchestral Tuning and the edition will include two playing scores. “The music of J.S. Bach has always enchanted me in many, many ways, everything from his Cantatas, to his delicious Lute Suites, and everything in between. In fact, almost as many as his control of delicious counterpoint, rhythmic pulse, and colourful, almost contemporary sounding harmonic colours, as in the Goldberg Variations.
So, when writing this piece, I imagined myself listening to some of his most memorable melodies, through a sort of ‘audio kaleidoscope’, something maybe that
H.G. Wells had forgotten to include in his Sci-Fi books. This device, takes the straight forward melody of Bach, and by twisting this kaleidoscope gadget, first one way, then another, with the odd shake up, thus turning our auditory senses around, we get a fragmented collection of colours, as each of the melodies blend into each other, creating a new ‘soundworld’ of Bach, his melodies fragmented, harmony vivid, and rhythms slightly twisted.
All the while this is happening, we are still able to clearly recognise his work, although now in a different, modern guise. So, using my own compositional instinct, I have tried to actually do this, and although I had to substitute my own musical imagination for the actual ‘audio kaleidoscope’ device, I hope I have achieved something new, a tribute, but also a possible work that Johann may have considered to write himself – a sort of Baroque meets Contemporary I suppose.”
[Peter Byrom-Smith]