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James Gardner  

Fetish Effigies

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 2000
for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass

• Instrumentation
  flute (doubles picc. and alto fl.); oboe (doubles cor anglais); B flat clarinet; horn in F; 1 percussion: marimba, vibraphone, bass drum, tam tam, sandpaper blocks and percussion cluster
• Programme Note

  “The boundary between collection and fetishism is mediated by classification and display in tension with accumulation and secrecy.” Two musical strands run virtually throughout this short piece, sometimes clearly differentiated, at other times more obscure and confused, but always at some level presenting an opposition between an ‘organic’, accretional layer and an ‘inorganic’ abruptly changing one. This opposition can operate not only at surface level – as it does at the beginning, when two highly differentiated instrumental combinations are presented, each with their own characteristic modes of behaviour – but also at a subcutaneous level, when applied to various ways of generating or modifying the basic material. These concerns form only the technical armature and implementation of the piece, of course, and much of the original musical imagery was suggested by Borges’ short story The Circular Ruins.

  While giving the obligatory (questionable?) disclaimer about the piece in no way being programmatic, much of the mood and atmosphere of the story was certainly in my mind during the initial sketching stages, and it seems to me that its central conceit – one human dreaming another into existence, by sheer will – is a marvellous metaphor for the act of composition.

• Availability

  • Gardner: Fetish Effigies; computer-set 

    Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
    
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  • Gardner: Fetish Effigies; computer-set  Year: 2005 

    Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
    
    $20.00
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  • James Gardner: Selected Works 

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  • Gardner: Charge and other works 

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  • Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 8 - Chamber Music II  Year: 2005 

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    $15.00
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