Campbell: Duet for violin and viola

Description

FE4033
LIVING COMPOSERS

When writing this duet I attempted to find a balance between partially formalised musical elements and intuitive, or improvisatory, composition. Much of the piece is based around symmetrical patterns; the overall structure and the basic harmonic language are built on principals of mirroring musical materials in a number of ways. The opening and closing sections centre on the open A strings of each instrument. At the start this single pitch is split into a mirror image, first microtonally then chromatically, before the harmonic language very suddenly opens into a freer interpretation of symmetrically derived pitch class sets. I hoped that this balance between formalised and intuitive processes would generate a language of continuity, with all musical materials stemming from the same integral principal, but also allow me to freely manipulate and react to the music produced by the symmetrical series.
Jocelyn Campbell

Playing score £7-99