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Tim Hodgkinson Hail and Flummox

Helen Keen flute
Mark van de Wiel clarinet
Michael Thompson horn
Jonathan Morton violin
Tim Gill cello

Hail and Flummox is a London Sinfonietta commission generated through the London Sinfonietta's Writing the Future scheme.

This recording features the world premiere performance, recorded live at Southbank Centre on 5 November 2011.

Writing the Future is generously supported by The Boltini Trust, The John S Cohen Foundation, Anthony Mackintosh and Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner.

The context in which a piece of music evolves is in many ways accidental and circumstantial. Nevertheless, by its attention to detail, music creates a sensation of necessity, a feeling that it could not have been other than how it is. Does this make it, as Paul de Man said of poetry, not so much the critique of ideology as its paradigm? The material for this piece grew when I was thinking about Judith Williamson's book 'Decoding Advertisements'. Ads bring signifiers into spatial proximity and invite us 'freely' to make the semantic connection. A piece of music also brings different elements into proximity, but to look for sense in its juxtapositions may lead to confusion. Music, especially unfamiliar music, doesn't offer ready-made participation for an already coerced subject, but goes back to a more generative level. Even when, as here, it uses a simple alternation of 'solos' and 'choruses', it tends to dissolve difference, to over-connect everything. And of course it is performed: the players give life to the potentials of the piece, taking its energies into themselves in the time and place of performance, transforming and channeling them back out to the listeners. Be flummoxed.

Programme note © Tim Hodgkinson