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Philip Brownlee  

The stars like years

Duration: 16' 00" (can vary) Year: 2011
for clarinet quartet

• Instrumentation
  for Eb clarinet, two Bb clarinet and a bass clarinet
• Programme Note

  The title is quoted from Nigel Cox’s novel The Cowboy Dog. In the novel, there is a poetic contrast between the constant presence of the landscape, and an elongated sense of time and space, set against the smallness of the concerns of the human characters. The music contains a similar juxtaposition of small detail against a spacious backdrop, and a warping of the listener’s perception of musical time.

  The stars like years is dedicated to the New Zealand Clarinet Quartet, and I am especially grateful to the Quartet for their close involvement in the compositional process. There are varying degrees of notational freedom in the score, from very loose rhythmic specification, to sections which are improvised using sets of notated gestural materials. The music derives much of its energy from the tension between spontaneous performance and the written-out structural framework.

  The stars like years was commissioned for the New Zealand Clarinet Quartet, with funding from Creative New Zealand.

• Availability

  • Brownlee: The stars like years; computer set 

    Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
    
    $28.00
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  • Brownlee: The stars like years; computer set 

    Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
    
    $33.50
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  • Philip Brownlee: The stars like years; audio 

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