Work

Programme Note

De humani corporis fabrica, a 16th-century anatomy textbook by Andreas Vesalius, was an important step in the Renaissance advancement of medical and anatomical knowledge. Divided into seven chapters, the book groups the myriad elements of the body into seven broad categories. This work for solo clarinet, divided into seven movements, responds to these categories through gestures, energy profiles and structural processes that take their cue from Vesalius’s taxonomy:

Book I: The bones and the ligaments that interconnect them
Book II: The ligaments and muscles, instruments of voluntary and deliberate motion
Book III: The series of veins and arteries throughout the body
Book IV: The nerves
Book V: The organs of nutrition and generation
Book VI: The heart and organs serving the heart
Book VII: The brain and organs of sense

Quite apart from the intertextual references, however, the extreme demands of the music heighten the role of the performer’s own body as a site for the literal embodiment of the physiological processes described in the text.

Dedication:

This piece was written for Richard Haynes

Performance History

	26 Mar 2012	Performed in the concert,The Body Electric (curated by Michael Norris) by Richard Haynes (clarinet), as part of the “New Zealand at Kings Place. New Worlds, New Perspectives” series in London.
		Richard Haynes
	19 May 2012	Performed by Richard Haynes at the Page Blackie Gallery, Wellington. Presented by Stroma.
		Richard Haynes    Stroma