Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Strongly impressionistic in its character, Cloudforms follows in the tradition of pieces such as Nuages by Debussy and A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden by Takemitsu in its essentially slow-moving, ethereal and hypnotic quality, as its title would suggest. Although the title might be an abstract noun (ie various forms of cloud) it also implies a more active process - clouds forming. The piece deals not with scientific type descriptions of meteorological events, but with musical clouds - ie accumulations of layers of orchestral texture and colour, floating in and out of the 'picture'.

Work Details

Year: 2007

Instrumentation: 2 Flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes )2nd doubling cor anglais), 2 clarinets in B flat (2nd doubling bass clarinet),2 bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon) (n.b wind players are required to play pieces of suspended metal e.g triangles, small bells, finger cymbals etc, with metal beaters), 3 French horns, 2 trumpets in C, 2trombones, timpani, 2 percussion( vibraphone, glockenspiel, chimes, suspended cymbal, crotales, bass drum, suspended cymbal, suspended tuned gong E4), harp, strings.

Duration: 10 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Advanced level youth orchestra upwards.

Commission note: Commissioned by Symphony Services International for performance by Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.