bricolage VI

Dedicated to Lucas and Jen

This is a timecode-supported polytemporal ensemble piece

bricolage VI 

For flute, bass clarinet, horn and violoncello

Duration 5’24”

In the arts, bricolage (French for ‘do-it-yourself’ projects) is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available. bricolage VI is no exception. Here, musical materials are transformed, recontextualised as necessary and assembled from a number of pre-existing pieces, particularly a 2001 polytemporal ensemble work for eight players titled New Land. As is customary with my compositions, materials are self-borrowed and transformed from pre-existing works. In this case, the horn writing is drawn largely from the orchestral work, a point in the landscape (2021), and the woodwind and string writing from the shape distance 1 (2013), with all materials shared and cross-referenced throughout. 

There is no programmatic intention in what unfolds as sound in this piece: any or no relationship to the title and the sounding music is forged at the discretion of the composer, performer and listener. Despite this statement, there is an unfolding of material that manifests through contrasting sections of music to hopefully provide the listener with a compelling experience even without programmatic intent. It is the interplay between and within these sections that is the narrative content of the composition. The piece has a duration of just over five minutes. bricolage VI is a timecode-supported polytemporal composition meaning that each player performs in their own independent tempi and all the players are structurally organised through timecode printed throughout each player’s part that is read in conjunction with their individual mobile phone stopwatches that are approximately synchronised at the start of the piece.