Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

I wrote this Chaconne for a disc my wife Trish was preparing to record a disc of solo cello music as a result of being in lockdown in 2020, the first year of the Covid pandemic. Trish's disc was dedicated to Chaconnes, which included the famous Chaconne from the Bach D minor solo violin partita. What an enormous inspiration for a composer to hear that piece every day for hours alongside the music of other great masters like Britten and Walton. And far be it that I was swamped or feeling battered by the genius pouring out in the room next to me, it was an inspiration beyond anything I had experienced in my life before.

One day on our regular dog walk in our favourite park, I suggested that I would love to give writing a Chaconne a go. Fortunately, Trish accepted in a way that suggested that she was hoping I might say something like that eventually. I had already had an idea to use a bass line based on the usable notes from the word Chaconne which I extended to Chaconnes which seemed to describe my day of listening more accurately. C - B (H) - A - C - E - Eb (S). This series or row of notes are heard regularly through the short piece played in differing rhythms in pizzicato. These pizzicato sections are interspersed with a series of variations based on the same series of notes and transpositions of them.

In some ways, the work is meant as a personal newsreel of what I had seen as headlines from around the world during this mad year. The loneliness, the fractured lives, the lonely deaths of so many and loss of connection and the deathly silence from the arts world.

The recording of the work is on Trish Dean - Ciaccona and available through the Ensemble Q website and it is also on Spotify. The first performance of the piece was given by Oliver Russell on October 26, 2022, in the Rosina Auditorium at the Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne. This performance can be viewed on YouTube.

Work Details

Year: 2020

Instrumentation: Cello.

Duration: 7 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Dedication note: Dedicated to Trish Dean

The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc in relation to this work:
Influenced by Bach, Britten, Ligeti, Crumb, Walton