British composer Michael Finnissy has so often turned to extant music in his own compositions that it’s practically one of the defining features of his work. Today’s Advent Calendar piece is one of his most blissful responses to earlier music, rethinking material by Byrd and Ockeghem as Two Motets for clarinet, violin, cello and vibraphone.
No. 1 is a short, positively dreamy concoction, progressing such that all four parts sound individual yet sympathetic to one another. It’s impossible not to hear the cello as, in part at least, determining (or, at least, implying) the nature of the harmony as it progresses, yet the music is also harmonically languorous, wafting in a limited range. For a time, both the violin and cello drop out, suggesting that the quartet comprises two duos, yet interaction – between these possible duos and the quartet as a whole – seems more a passive by-product of individual movement than an active contrapuntal intention. Though it’s not cyclical or isorhythmic, there’s something of the behavioural quality of “Liturgie de cristal” from Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps, music that could seemingly carry on forever, and ending just as abruptly.
No. 2 is about a minute longer, and has a more obviously conversational tone in the melodic writing, passed primarily between the violin and cello in the foreground, with one freezing on a sustained note while the other sings. The clarinet’s role again functions as a countermelody of sorts, with the vibraphone contributing a third voice that also serves as an attractive, somewhat bell-like embellishment. Here too there’s the sense of a non-cyclical yet potentially open-ended melodic language. Finnissy closes No. 2 with the most gorgeous coda, which in character draws closer to No. 1: all four parts become fixated on just three notes, A, B and C, rotating around these hypnotically for the final minute of the piece.
This performance of Two Motets, from a 2015 Proms Portrait concert, was given by Jack McNeill (clarinet), Sarah Farmer (violin), Thomas McMahon (cello) and Matthew Firkins (vibraphone), with No. 1 conducted by Daniele Rosina.
