a n o t h e r   f i n e   m e s s

Instrumentation:             3.3.3.3/4.3.4.1/Timps.Perc(3).Pno/Str   

Duration:                       8’         

Performance details:      24.06.2003, St. Valentine, Port Grimaud, France, Leesd University Symphony Orchestra, cond; Michael Young.

26.06.2003, Place de Michel, Port Grimaud, Leesd University Symphony Orchestra, cond; Michael Young.           

Recording details:          as second performance

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This is a fantasia and fugue using the Cuckoo Song (exposed by Clarinet solo, bar 45), the theme from the Laurel and Hardy films.  The title refers to Stan Laurel’s catchphrase, ‘Well this is another fine mess you’ve gottun us into.’ The parameters in writing this piece were that was to be performable by a student standard orchestra after few rehearsals, and that it would be suitable to perform as an encore piece in a concert programme.

Before the main theme is exposed in bar 45, there is a somewhat satirical introduction, which takes fragments of the Cuckoo Song – the most basic being the rising and falling minor 3^rd – and stages them in a heavily polytonal texture, which effectively leads from C major to A minor (bar 17).  From here, tension is built up moving back to the dominant of C major at bar 41.  The main theme is then exposed at bar 45, and then set as a series of variations with increasingly diverse harmonic relationships until the double bar at bar 84. By this point, the main theme has been broken down so much; it is not longer intact as the tune. In the section starting at bar 85, motific fragments form the main theme form the background framework over which a second theme is introduced in bar 89 by the solo Flute. This theme breaks down in bar 101, and then a new motific framework is built up, on a pedal A, to prepare a third theme at bar 125, first given by the Trombones.  This theme rises and then falls in intensity, and closes the entire fantasia section at bar 156.  The pedal A from the previous motific framework functions as a dominant pedal, and so the fugue then begins in D major, using the Cuckoo Song as the 1^st subject.  After a four-part fugue texture has been completed, a coda section (bar 189) brings the work to a close.