Causton: As Kingfishers Catch Fire
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- Composer: Richard Causton (1971-)
- Format: Full Score
- Instrumentation: Clarinet, Flute, String Quartet (Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Cello), Harp
- Work: As Kingfishers Catch Fire (2007)
- ISBN:
- Size: 9.5 x 13.0 inches
- Pages: 33
Description
As Kingfishers Catch Fire was composed in London during the summer and autumn of 2007 and takes its title from some lines by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Like the animals in the poem, I wanted to allow the instruments in my piece to be unashamedly themselves, and this conditioned the musical material: open fifths in the strings, long cantilenas in the wind, and a certain grandiosity in the writing for harp.
The piece opens with a sort of speeded-up Renaissance counterpoint for string quartet – perfect intervals and a resonant setting – and proceeds through several contrasting but linked episodes: a vertiginous solo for harp; a ‘shadow boxing' passage for harp and string quartet; distorted folk music which gives rise to fireworks in the clarinet part; frantic, strummed pizzicato; a slowly unfolding melody in the wind over string tremolos, which leads via a reprise back to a transformed, now subdued version of the opening string quartet. In the closing section all seven instruments, now united, cross a threshold into a slightly different world from which their previous music can still be glimpsed.
© Richard Causton
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Causton: As Kingfishers Catch Fire
