Causton: Rituals of Hunting and Blooding

Description

The initial idea for this piece was as music for dance, and although the conception changed subsequently, the first movement is still, in effect, a series of interlinked dances. A drama is enacted between the instruments in which the clarinet plays the part of the hunted, pursued through a maze, or a hall of mirrors, by the other instruments. in the first minute or so of the piece, the gap between hunter and hunted is continually diminished as the music is cramped into an ever-decreasing space. The claustrophobia of this situation is played out obsessively again and again throughout the movement like total internal reflection, or the horror of history repeating itself.

The second movement is the blooding which occurs at the end of the chase. Here an entirely different ritual takes place; the instruments – now including flugelhorn and alto trombone – act as a unit, playing a chorale which recurs throughout the structure. Whether the blooding is that of death or of birth remains open.

© Richard Causton, 2002