Like a strand of Scarlet
The Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) ends its first season (2000/2001) as Resident Period-instrument Orchestra at St. John’s on 20 March with a programme that mixes the old and the new. Conductor Paul Goodwin is behind AAM’s decision to commission works from composers who show an affinity to the sound world of the period instrument orchestra. The first commission was John Tavener’s Eternity’s Sunrise, and this was followed by David Bedford’s Like a Strand of Scarlet, which here receives its London premiere.
This piece was commissioned by The Academy of Ancient Music with funds from the John S. Cohen Foundation, and lasts for about 17 minutes. The title comes from a section in ‘O quam tu pulchra es’ by Schütz, the harmonies of which provided the starting point for the piece, and the mood of the slow section.
Two sequences of arpeggios are built up, one starting on C major, the other C minor. When this material reaches its full flowering, it is accompanied by a sustained melody in the wind which is actually the first note of each of the arpeggios.
The second section of the piece features a dialogue between the harpsichord playing chords, answered by fast toccata like passages from various other instruments. This reaches a climax then dies away, and leads to an extended slow movement featuring rhapsodic solos from a violin and an oboe. All the melodies are based on the tune which accompanied the arpeggios earlier, but there is also a large amount of ornamentation. The accompaniment consists of cluster-like chords. A feature of baroque performance style that has always attracted me is the minimal use of vibrato. This means that cluster-like chords, with quite a few notes a semitone apart, will sound pure and beautiful, because there will be no vibrato to confuse the sound. This movement in its emotional feeling is intended to evoke memories of the slow movement of the Bach double violin concerto, and also, in the simplicity of the harmonies and the directness of the rhythm my years playing keyboards in a rock band. Towards the end, it is combined with the second section, with the chords originally played by the harpsichord now played by violas and cellos, and the toccata passages by the bassoon and theorbo. The accompaniment to this whole passage uses a ground bass which at the end comes to the fore and is developed in a very contrapuntal fashion.
The recapitulation follows, which is similar to the opening of the piece but features repeated notes from the strings, and builds up the arpeggios in a much more dramatic fashion. On top of this, the wind play the material from the slow section. This dies away for a reprise of the original version.