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Junk Concerto (2001-2) |
For chamber orchestra with two amateur percussion groups and solo trumpet - c.14'
Commission: Cambridge Festival of Music 2000 for the Orchestra of St. Johns, London.
First performance: 16 November, 2000, The Cambridge Corn Exchange, the percussion concertinos: Coleridge and Parkside Community College percussion groups, solo trumpet, Paul Archibald, The Orchestra of St. Johns, John Lubbock, Stephen Montague, Cameron Sinclair, conductors. First performance of the finale version: Making New Waves Festival, Budapest, 10 February, 2002, Stephen Montague, conductor.
Junk has always fascinated people, especially when it is someone else's. One person's junk is another's treasure. When I was young, I liked poking around the town junkyard in Fairmont, West Virginia. I always found something I just had to drag home (much to my parents' alarm). In the 1930s the Americal composer/inventor, John Cage (1912-1992) was also fascinated with junk. He developed a radical musical philosophy which propelled him to the conclusion that all sound is music and everything is musical. With this liberating view he raided the local wrecking yards and turned automobile parts into brilliant new percussive intruments. Three Constructions (1939-41) for percussion ensemble, uses hub-caps, laod-springs, tin sheets, a conch shell and brake drums and has now become a 20 th century classic.
The same spirit is present in my work. It may look like junk to you but I think of it as sonic jewellery. The instruments you see on stage have been culled from junk yards, kitchen cupboards and inventions made at home. Beauty, this evening, may not be in the eye of the beholder, but in the ear.
The traditional concerto pits a solo instrument(s) against the orchestra in a kind of musical duel and wedding. The Junk Concerto uses this idea and also the Baroque format of having not just one soloist, but a group of soloists called a concertino . The concertini in this case are two different percussion groups (left and right of the orchestra) plus a solo trumpet.
Notes © 2002 Stephen Montague