Abstract
JPR, a homage to Jean-Philippe Rameau, has two points of origin: a series of workshops with Trio Aporia exploring improvisatory ways of working and a concert given by the trio in the summer of 2015 which provided my first contact with Rameau's Pièces de clavecin en concerts, music I immediately loved. Bridging the gap between these two starting points was what drove the creative process; I decided to use Rameau's music as source material and devise a means of doing so that preserved the sense of spontaneity I had enjoyed in my explorations with the trio. The result is a kind of 'mash up' in which movements from different suites in Rameau's collection are superimposed. The coordination between players is loose and, indeed, became looser as the piece developed; the players never follow a common pulse, producing a kind of anti-chamber music in which each performer remains within the self-contained confines of their own part. The notes heard are Rameau's own and occur in the tempo, rhythmic values and phrase lengths he specifies. But each player's part is heavily filtered producing silences or 'voids' in the original music. These spaces produce 'lumpy', uneven textures with unpredictable ruptures in their continuities. The clogged and static music that results is not intended as distortion or parody but, rather, an affectionate appropriation of Rameau's miniature masterpieces.