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Conversationsfor clarinet, viola and cello

Robert Davidson

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Program Note

Conversations was composed for Perihelion shortly after returningfrom seven months of travel, focusing on musical study in SouthIndia and spending time in Europe and the USA. Perhaps as a result ofthe stimulus of this period, I found myself approaching thecomposition with a sense of openness, changing from my usualconcern for the unity which results from reduced material. While theuse of material is reduced, it stems from a wide range of sources,playfully combined. Hymns from my Methodist upbringing, Bachcounterpoint, Sibelius harmony, Beatle tunes, rhythms of Kerala andcountless other musics went into forming, in varying degrees, mymusical intuition as it was in 1993. I attempted to allow this intuitionfull rein, believing that music is most successful when it accuratelyre ects its composer and his or her background.

Rational structures serve to organise the intuitive material of thethree movements. The rst and third movements are simpleground-bass canons. I am attracted to this form by its neatcombination of repetition and variation, simultaneously defying andsatisfying expectations, and by the way the instruments copy eachother and get beyond their individual concerns. In the secondmovement a process of ever-diminishing time intervals articulates ahandful of stretched-out chords, which accompany freepattern-melodies, swapped between the instruments inconversational fashion. Surrounding the rst and second movements,and in the postlude, is music of quiet simplicity. Here there is lessconcern for rational structure than for communication of emotion,though not without a certain distance.

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Conversations Robert Davidson

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