Requiescat
...for them all
Quintet for Strings and Flute
Requiescat was a response to a friend’s untimely death and to Edmund de Waal’s “The Hare with the Amber Eyes”, a family history that includes devastating experiences of antisemitism in pre-war Vienna. Having read many positive reviews, of de Waal’s book (most of which focussed on his inheritance of a collection of netsuke and mentioned little else) and Japanese-glazed pottery exhibitions, the book’s content was completely unexpected and deeply disturbing. It’s been interesting to find myself driven to compose Requiescat as a reaction to my own personal experiences, and disconcerting to realize how many tears I have shed in the course of writing it.
After the opening introduction sets a dark tone, the cello introduces the main melody which develops into a canon as the other instruments join in. This is followed by a fugue-like section in which dissonance and the introduction of quaver parts create tension. Towards the end, all the instruments play 8 bars of relentless quavers, reiterating the variations that have developed, to convey a crisis that will not be resolved. Requiescats winds down imparting a sense of acceptance and then remembrance, ending with a final symbolic, or maybe ironic, plagal cadence.
After the opening introduction sets a dark tone, the cello introduces the main melody which develops into a canon as the other instruments join in. This is followed by a fugue-like section in which dissonance and the introduction of quaver parts create tension. Towards the end, all the instruments play 8 bars of relentless quavers, reiterating the variations that have developed, to convey a crisis that will not be resolved. Requiescats winds down imparting a sense of acceptance and then remembrance, ending with a final symbolic, or maybe ironic, plagal cadence.