This video is a brief introduction to my latest composition, a double concerto for cor anglais and bassoon. I’ve titled it ‘Kin’ because of the obvious kinship between these two instruments – both woodwinds played with a double reed, both occupying the mid-to-lower part of the full orchestral range, and, especially in the two octaves where their ranges overlap, both having somewhat similar although distinctive timbres.
Despite their superficial kinship, however, the cor anglais and bassoon have different family histories, the cor anglais having developed historically from the oboe, the bassoon from earlier bass double-reed instruments such as the dulcian. The cor anglais is also played by oboists who relish its lower range, not bassoonists who yearn to go even higher than the already enormous range their instrument allows. Kinship here, as in anthropology, is thus as much about social connections as genealogy. And just as even the closest of siblings can have very different characters, the kinship of cor anglais and bassoon does not mean they have the same musical personalities.
In this music I’ve given both instruments ample opportunity to express their unique characters and capabilities and explore the areas of their ranges that don’t overlap, while on the other hand emphasising their kinship and similarities in conversational passages where they engage in dialogue and imitation, such as this passage from the 1st movement: Interestingly, however, it’s in passages like these, where they play in the same range and repeat similar musical ideas, that their different characters sometimes emerge even more clearly.
There are four movements in Kin. The 1st (and longest) is lyrical and dramatic by turns – two more brief excerpts:
The 2nd movement is serene throughout:
The 3rd movement is a dialogue between the two soloists accompanied by harp, which also joins in the conversation. In some ways this movement resembles an accompanied cadenza, but it’s not just for technical display, and there is a miniature psychological drama in the central section where the instruments (and the tonality) become disoriented, the bassoon despairs, the cor anglais encourages, and the bassoon gradually, falteringly regains its confidence: … the movement then ending with the three instruments in complete and happy agreement – this clip is of the start and a passage near the end:
The 4th movement is a vigorous, at times exuberant piece in 7/8 time: This movement also has an episode of chaos or confusion in the middle where ‘things fall apart’ before recovering and regaining their vitality:
The four movements of Kin all originated as part of my collection Climates of the Mind (2021) but have all been substantially revised, and in places rewritten. The most notable changes are the addition of the cor anglais solo part in the third and fourth movements, which is entirely newly composed, and the addition of a harp to the orchestra in the first and second movements, where it not only joins in in tuttis but also adds new elements in cor anglais and bassoon solo (or duo) passages – comments, punctuation, markers of harmonic change or expressive intensity, etc.
In their original versions in Climates of the Mind these movements each had single word titles representing a particular mood or feeling, as this was part of that work’s conception. I have discarded those titles here, not only because this is a concerto, but because in reality there is not much music that expresses only a single emotion, and I don’t wish to create expectations that might limit either the listeners’ or musicians’ perceptions of the expressive range of this music.
Kin is yet to be performed by real musicians. What you hear here has been carefully crafted from sampled and synthesized sounds to be as realistic as possible, but synthesized music is never as good as the real thing. If you are or know of a professional cor anglais player, bassoonist and/or orchestra that might be interested in being its first performers, please CONTACT me.
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