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The Creatures Indoors (1996) |
narrator and orchestra - 30'
Stephen Montague/Jo ShapcottCommissioned by British Telecommunications PLC with the Association of British Orchestras for the 1997 BT Celebration Series. First performance: 16 January, 1997, Barbican Centre, London. The London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Luxon, narrator, Tommaso Placidi, conductor recorded for radio by Classic FM. First North American performance: 8 December, 1998, The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC. The National Symphony Orchestra, Bill Grimmett, narrator, Anthony Aibel, conductor.he Creatures Indoors is a setting of poems by English poet, Jo Shapcott, for narrator and orchestra. The poems were inspired by her own unique interest in the bizarre, and the composer's children's fondness for some of Nature's darker creatures like the rattlesnake, vulture and shark. The "promenade" connecting this gallery of wonderfully weird portraits is a series of flies: Houseflies, Bluebottles, Blackflies and a large fly swarm leading into the finale.The orchestration makes use of numerous unusual techniques not frequently found in traditional orchestral music, such as the sound of wind created by blowing air through the instruments or a clarinettist playing just the mouth piece of the instrument. There is also some audience participation (for those who would like to join in). At several points, you, the audience, will be invited by the Narrator to make the "hiss" of a snake or the "buzz" of a pestering fly. And for those of you who have brought music boxes, the Narrator will signal you when it is time to join the orchestra for a "grand chorus of mechanical voices" (between Panda Power and Cabbage Dreams).
The movements are as follows:
Introduction (orchestra)
1. Come on in (narrator)
2. Rattlesnake
3. Vulture
4. Fly Interlude no. 1: "House Flies"
5. Elephant
6. Fly Interlude no. 2: "House Flies" and "Bluebottles"
7. Staircase Tiger
8. Washing up with the Shark Family
9. Fly Interlude no. 3: "Black Flies"
10. Penguin Complaints
11. Panda Power
12. Cabbage Dreams
13. Fly Swarm (leading directly into)
14. Finale (orchestra)
© Stephen Montague