Score and parts in preperation

This work features a montage of orchestral excerpts, plus a central aria for soprano, drawn from the third of four operas on which Martin Crimp and I have collaborated over the last couple of decades. Based on the life of Edward II, the narrative follows the King’s obsessive devotion to his lover Gaveston and his scandalous - and eventually fatal - neglect of both his wife Isabel and his country.

The seven movements, most of them brief, follow one another without break:

1. spacious and warm in tone, dominated by arching violin lines
2. low in tessitura and sullen in atmosphere, a sombre nocturne marked by antiphonal brass octaves and, at its conclusion, a pair of tolling gongs
3. a swift and energetic toccata
4. Isabel’s aria, from the opera’s second scene. The aria immediately follows the testimony of three witnesses who have been brought secretly into the palace to let Isabel know their grievances. They claim that while they have starved, Gaveston has expropriated their land and indulged in extravagant musical entertainments. They also allude to the King’s transgressive sexual conduct. In response, Isabel controls her anger, acknowledges their shared humanity, but then gives the witnesses a stark lesson in the difference between monetary and aesthetic value, dissolving in front of them a precious pearl, before throwing them out. She has, however, understood the warning, and realised that political stability will only be restored by Gaveston’s destruction  
5. a tumultuous tutti where, within a much more turbulent context, the brass octaves and gongs from the second movement return
6. a slow and stately chorale which eventually erupts into a sustained orchestral conflagration
7. a short, restless coda

Interludes and Aria is dedicated to Sir Simon Rattle on his 70^th birthday.

G.B. July 2024