In Memoriam, Sir Michael Tippett

Milner, Guy

Duration

1m 00s

Composed

1998

Instrumentation

String Ensemble

Scoring

vn, va, vc

Availability

Contact CoMA

About the work

This minute long ‘elegietta’ is just long enough to convey a mood of memory for a composer I’d never met and didn’t know all that much about. The brevity of the piece seems correct for a music student who was told he had no future as a composer and who was sent to prison because he refused to fight. Harmonically, the piece is built around a tone row, but more importance is placed on the chord F,G,Bb and its inversions, which is being played in one form or another for half of the piece – minimalism meets serialism.

Technical notes

Octave leaps in the last few bars in all parts may cause difficulty. Intonation is tricky due to serial idiom – parts of it are meant to sound consonant, around the basic chord of F,G,Bb