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These twenty (mostly very brief) bagatelles were among the first pieces I wrote while on a one-month residency at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, in October 2005.

The musical material I use in these Bagatelles I feel relates to my being in Europe (albeit a rather far-flung part) for the first time, and my subsequent reflection on my ‘European’ classical musical upbringing on the other side of the world in New Zealand. At times the music veers into irony, such as the violin caught in a maze of its own making (bagatelle 7) or the pianist unable to stop her rapid motions at either end of the keyboard (no. 14), sometimes to a laid-back jazzy feeling (no. 11) or quasi-improvisation (no 10); there are dance-like numbers too (4 and 19). The set ends with the longest bagatelle, a chromatic meditation over the open fifths of the cello and low register of the piano.

• Carey: Bagatelles; facsimile 

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For several years I had been promising Andrew a new piece for bass clarinet, and previously worked in Vancouver with Barry Truax’s POD system to produce some intriguing granulation files derived from notes played by Andrew. These languished unused until 2003 when I heard some wonderful frogs singing in the middle of the night at Chulalongkorn University of Bangkok, and managed to get some recordings. These two sources, plus some transformed temple bell recordings and a mad chorus of police whistles in evening traffic, provided the source material for the soundscape. I began writing the music for bass clarinet around this soundscape.
Much of the bass clarinet part is composed using a synthetic scale which is different in each octave. Although the end result is an arbitrary invention which pleased me, the original inspiration came from exploring the relationship between the Thai seven note scale and pentatonic scales. I had originally been thinking that Thai percussion instruments might be appropriate for the percussion part, but have since decided that the any available instruments may be used. The first performance used a mixture of ‘junk’ percussion (e.g. bowls, cans and flower pots) and bongo drums, but any experiments are welcome.

• Elmsly: Nocturne; electroacoustic part 

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• Elmsly: Nocturne; computer-set 

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• Elmsly: Nocturne (clarinet part only); computer-set 

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• Elmsly: Nocturne; computer-set 

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• Elmsly: Nocturne; computer-set 

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• Elmsly: Nocturne; computer-set 

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• John Elmsly: Nocturne; audio 

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• Two Works by John Elmsly 

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