In Memoriam, Sir Michael Tippett

Milner, Guy

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