Barry Conyngham: Cello Concerto (1984) - Movement II

Abstract

"Barry Conyngham's Cello Concerto was commissioned by Musica Viva Australia as part of its bicentennial commissioning program and premiered on 24 October-1985 in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House with Florian Kitt as the soloist. In 1986 the Australian Chamber Orchestra included the concerto in its repertoire for a European tour. Conyngham began work on the concerto in mid-1983, just after finishing the short score of the opera Fly but before he produced the opera's final orchestration. For a time both works overlapped, but the concerto was completed shortly before the date line of Fly, which the composer gives as 2 March 1984. Inevitably there are features which the two works have in common. For example, there are shared rhythmical devices, notably at the start of the concerto's third movement, which matches the opening of the opera. But there are less obvious echoes of the opera's orchestral 'sea and air' effects in the use of frequent changes of time signature to notate irregular accents, and in the particular formation of the short note patterns which occur throughout the concerto. These rapidly reiterated blocks are usually short scaled and short ranged. Often set in opposed motion, they travel in waves from timbre to timbre across the strings, creating a Conyngham trademark traceable as far back as / ce Carving (1971). In the cello concerto these waves oscillate around slow harmonic changes, the pulses smoothly asymmetrical. Universal published the Cello Concerto's full score in 1984 but, after discussions with Florian Kitt, the composer made a number of alterations which are not to be found there. The score gives the minimum orchesation required as four first violins, four second violins, two violas, one cello, one double bass and the solo cello. Uncharacteristically for Conyngham, the three movements are left untitled. He has, in the past, chosen to refer his audience to emotional symbolism via titles derived from Japanese theatre (for Shadows of Noh, the double bass concerto) and popular art (for Ice Carving, the violin concerto) and Australian romantic nationalism (for Southern Cross, the double concerto). Graeme Skinner, friend and student of the composer, wrote in the notes to the first performance: At its simplest, the concerto depicts an individual (the cellist) being shaped by, and in turn shaping, the environment. In at least one instance, the composer refers directly to the dedicatee's (Florian Kitt's) experience. The Austrian cellist is given a counterpoint to the strings' Viennese waltz parody in the third movement, at once highlighting environment and individual response. The opening of the concerto's first movement represents another sort of response, more akin to the forces at work in Michelangelo' s The Slaves, as the cello gradually breaks away from an inexorable repeatednote pattern. On a larger scale, the slow chorale from the middle of the first movement is made [the] subject of transformations later in the work, not least in the third movement's waltz. All three movements present separate, distinct musical statements, but there are also a sustained connectedness and mathematical logic in the drawing out of the closely related materials of each and in the nature of the transformations which is not only observable in the score but apparent in performance. The composer speaks of the work as modelled on traditional forms but developed by register and texture changes, not tonal ones. The first movement opens with an ostinato effect on A flat, which pulses irregularly through a succession of rapidly changing time signatures - 4/8, 6/32, 4/8, 9/32, 4/8, 3/32, 4/8 - in the first seven bars (see Figure 31) a complex visual device, but aurally registered only as smoothly changing rhythm. Written accents highlight the demisemiquaver groupings of four and three. This creates a sense of purposeful urgency out of which the first violins rise, settling into a higher pitched ostinato, leaving the lower strings to travel as before. The soloist then takes up the middle ground between them. Continual shifts from solemnity to playfulness eventually disappear in a slow central section of balletic elongations. The mood becomes trance-like (see Figure 32). The solo cello then takes up an even slower lyric display with brief, scratched-in commentary from the ensemble (see Figure 33). This gradually fills out tonally then suddenly returns to the opening o tinato which develop the original feeling of urgency, deepened into anxiety through thickened harmony. The sustaiaed vocalising of the cello then returns, only to be elegantly swept up in three ascending figures (see Figure 34). The central movement employs sul tasto, sul ponticello and pizzicato and arco techniques (see Figure 35) to create hazy, shimmering impressions sometimes referred to as Conyngham's 'light on water' effect. There is a slow filling out of sighing glissandi (see Figure 36), interrupted by deep cello commands. This dialogue continues until the whole of the strings' tone reinforced pitch undulations come together repeatedly under it, peaking in a four note descending glissando figure emerging on the cello but spreading outwards (see Figure 37). An incisive, melodic cello line finally overwhelms the fluttering excitement of the upper strings. There is a general and diffused climax. A brief downward fall of four notes from the cello precipitates a wry ending. The final movement presents an obsessive, tightly controlled three-against-four rising figure in the first and second violins against a descending three in the violas (see Figure 38). The motive buzzes and rocks until overtaken by deep plungings from the solo cello (see Figure 39). There is a feeling of energy appropriately used in hurrying to some puzzling destination. A long, expressive cadenza breaks through. New sighings, echoing the second movement in feeling, take over, with commentaries by the soloist, using a rising broken figure speaking alone (see Figure 40). The hurrying sense is then revived in a new and complex figure reminiscent of the opening ostinato but coupled with a straight chordal contrast (see Figure 41). The two figures interact repeatedly, then break off for a second, more virtuosic, cadenza. A last, brief variant of the opening races across the last moments of the concerto, swelling twice to a forte and ending with abrupt neatness (see Figure 42)." -- Therese Radic Show more