Elodie Bouny
Les Productions D’Oz: Score and separate parts (10, 4, 4, and 4 pages respectively)
This piece was commissioned from the composer by the Guitar Foundation of America for three players, Sunil Parameswaran, Antara Dasgupta, and Iqbal Asify, and their performance of this work can be found on YouTube lasting for 3 minutes 30 seconds, for any interested parties.
This one movement work is in a number of short sections, beginning with an introduction marked Dreamy (With little rubato as possible) where guitar one plays a solo rising quaver motif in E minor, to be harmonised by Guitar 2 at bar 2., but then in bar 3, the first guitar plays an Eb Major 7th chord, guitar two plays a C and D interval of a second, and the 3rd guitar plays a bar fifth on a low Bb, which does make for a considerable crunch, added to by two more full bar chords that move away from the initial Eb Major 7th.The sequence repeats slightly altered with the full chords now harmonised differently by guitars 2 and 3.After several more slightly varied repeats of this sequence the speed moves to 177 crotchets a minute where the second guitar plays a repeated rocking style of arpeggio while guitar three, marked ‘Conqueror’ plays a set of bare fifths and guitar one plays some tambora percussion. After a while guitar one then moves in line with guitar two, and plays some dancing off – beat rhythms along with guitar two’s fourths and fifths, with guitar three continuing the bare fifths. This fast section continues with a section marked Mysterious where the motif transfers to guitar three, with now guitar one and two playing the jumping off beat rhythms but now fighting against one another rather than playing the same rhythms. This considerable section reaches a climax before a new Calm theme emerges, guitar one in long octave pairs, and guitars 2 and 3 playing moving arpeggio patterns similar to the mysterious section before. A final section marked Rhythmic concentrates on the use of pizzicato, various percussive techniques, and minor second clashes at first, before the rocking motif from earlier re- enters on guitar 2 along with the ‘Conqueror’ idea on guitar 3 , and a mixture of percussion, and off – beat rhythms on guitar one. The final move to the coda is via a climactic rush around the fingerboard from all three players, in a mixture of quavers and triplet quavers, before a final chord of an altered G Major.
The work is relentless in its chromatic, very modern style that, as I said before, many will love and a number will not be able to get to grips with. The difficulty factor is quite high, so only decent trios need to get involved with this work.
Chris Dumigan