Modal Fantasy

SKU: AP.1820

UPC: 038081011066. English.

Idyllwild Fantasy is a popular entry on many state contest lists. The slow opening provides an opportunity to develop legato phrasing. The rhythmic allegro features syncopated rhythms and interesting modal melodies.

SKU: KJ.WB92F

Bell-like marcato sections contrast with lyrical phrases in this delightful setting of this familiar carol. The modal harmonies and grand finish will add just the right touch to your upcoming holiday concert! Correlates With Best In Class Bk. 2 Page 7 / SOE Bk. 2 Page 9.

SKU: DZ.DZ-4283

ISBN 9782898522000.

The writing of this piece arose from seeing Goya's painting Un pavo muerto an unadorned oil painting where a turkey and a wicker basket rest on an indistinct black background.
Fantasizing about making a harpsichord fantasy (I wrote a double stave version of the piece), how to evoke and decline the sensations felt at the glance, musically? Through, I thought, the use of a particularly dark and passionate mode, culturally and emotionally akin to the tones and features of the great Spanish painter's painting. Unlike my usual type of writing, often susceptible to unexpected disturbances, I forced myself to use almost exclusively the notes of the modal scale in different combinations, and in the middle section of the piece to employ them by transforming them into brighter modes (to let some light filter through).
A composition that also features some rather explicit moments of instrumental virtuosity, ideally thought of as possible offshoots of a hellish fandango.
- Alfredo Franco, January 2024

«L'écriture de cette pièce est née de la contemplation du tableau de Goya Un pavo muerto, une simple peinture à l'huile où une dinde et un panier en osier reposent sur un fond noir indistinct. En rêvant de composer une fantaisie pour clavecin (j'ai écrit une version à double portée de la pièce), comment évoquer et traduire musicalement les sensations ressenties au premier regard ? J'ai pensé que cela pourrait se faire en utilisant un mode particulièrement sombre et passionné, culturellement et émotionnellement proche des tons et des caractéristiques de la grande peinture espagnole du maître. Contrairement à mon style habituel, souvent sujet à des perturbations inattendues, je me suis imposé d'utiliser presque exclusivement les notes de la gamme modale dans différentes combinaisons, et dans la section centrale de la pièce, de les transformer en modes plus lumineux (pour laisser filtrer un peu de lumière).
Une composition qui comporte également quelques moments assez explicites de virtuosité instrumentale, idéalement pensés comme des dérivations possibles d'un fandango infernal.»
- Alfredo Franco, janvier 2024.

SKU: HL.14008374

ISBN 9781846096150. UPC: 884088435202. 8.25x11.75x0.105 inches.

The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies' fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company, first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace, Oslo, Norway, as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004, with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor, an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq. I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560, now in Vienna), which had been the inspiration for my sixth Strathclyde Concerto, for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination, but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of the work. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog, bind the devil with a cord, truss, wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks, guess whom I shall choose, courting, odds and evens. The single movement juxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture, taking liberties which would never be present in, for instance, Brunelleschi architectural drawings, so here, with a constant sequence of transformation processes, I have distorted the neat, precise implications of modal progression, expressed in the unison opening phrase (from F to B through A sharp/B flat), so that the ear is led, en route, into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that I was reading into, and behind the games, adult motives and implications, concerning aggression and war, with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B progression underlying the whole construction derives from a passage in the development of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, and the opening of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. However, unlike in these models, here a real - if temporary - sense of resolution occurs at the close of the quartet: as when the curtain falls on the reconciled Count and Countess in 'Figaro' one wonders how long the F/B truce will hold, and games break out again. The quartet is dedicated to Giuseppe Rebecchini, Roman architect, and friend since the nineteen-fifties.