Buxton Orr: Refrains V [download]

For clarinet and piano, composed 1988. Written for and first performed by Duncan Prescott Mitchell at the Purcell Room in the RAM Westmorland. Concert Series on 18th ay 1988. Duration: around 7 minutes.

Refrains V in a series of similarly titled works comprising two chamber duos, a ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio, a string quartet, a work for the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra and a work for chamber orchestra.

They are all one movement pieces in which the overall structure is clarified by the recurrence of a characteristic ‘refrain’. The distinction from a rondo design lies in the fact that the refrain, while retaining its essential feature, whatever that is in a particular work, is subjected to varying degrees of transformation and development.

Here, the refrain is characterised by its irregular metre, heard at the outset in its simplest, direct form. Three short contrasting episodes in regular metre are sandwiched between the opening refrain and its three further, more complex, recurrences.

Computer typeset score (19p) and clarinet part (8p) saved as pdf files.