Score [ePDF]
Elude : for solo bassoon [eScore] / Elliott Gyger.
Work Overview
Writing unaccompanied solo works for single-line instruments is often considered to be particularly challenging, as there is nowhere to hide. The present work can be seen in some ways as an essay in dramatizing this scenario: the music is constantly seeking refuge, in ambiguity and misdirection, in the spaces between one thing and another.
Elusiveness is encapsulated not only in the meaning of the title, but in the word itself. It differs by a single letter from the genre label Etude, with its connotations of virtuosic patterning to build technique; but it also shares with Prelude and Interlude a key semantic element relating to play. The characteristically forthright sound of the bassoon is often avoided, through the use of techniques such as muffled fingerings, timbre trills, quiet slap-tonguing and unorthodox overblown harmonics. However, the music's main strategy for evasion is structural: the line exploits sudden twists, bifurcations, rhythmic dislocations, false trails and disguised returns, as if eluding pursuit through the corridors of a labyrinth. From time to time there are glimpses of a more tranquil space, but these in their turn prove elusive.
Work Details
Year: 2021
Duration: 8 min.
Difficulty: Advanced
Dedication note: for Tom St John
Commission note: Commissioned by Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).. commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music as part of the ANAM Set (2021)
Performances of this work
15 May 2022: at ANAM Set Festival - Weights and Measures (North Magdalen Laundry, Abbotsford Convent). Featuring Lyndon Watts.
14 May 2022: at ANAM Set Festival - Weights and Measures (North Magdalen Laundry, Abbotsford Convent). Featuring Lyndon Watts.
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