About the Music

Idée fixe for four bass clarinets was commissioned by and dedicated to "Bass Buddies" - an ensemble of four experienced teachers and clarinettists who met in 2022 to enjoy and explore the growing bass clarinet quartet repertoire.

The work consists of two contrasting pieces. The first piece is a slow rather lugubrious chorale with a lighter more lyrical song-like passage. It serves as an introduction to the fast exuberant second piece which abounds in spirited folk-like tunes.

The title Idée fixe refers to the repeated rapid semiquaver figure of the second piece.

Extended-range instruments NOT required. Score: 9 pages, spiral bound; parts: 2-3 pages each, booklet.

Hard Copy Edition

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About the Composer

Hugh Shrapnel was born in 1947 in Birmingham, England. He took up the oboe aged 13 and started composing at 16. He had private composition lessons with Elizabeth Lutyens, and studied composition with Norman Demuth and Cornelius Cardew at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Later on he gained a B.mus degree at Goldsmiths College London.

Hugh’s music has been widely performed in Britain as well as the US and Europe. In recent years Hugh has had many pieces performed by the London New Wind Music Festival and the Cornelius Cardew Concerts Trust. His 7 Dances for Bob for clarinet and bass clarinet have recently been performed by Ian Mitchell and Catriona Scott.

His music is characterised by its lyricism, sense of atmosphere and place, an element of humour, love of nature, use of unusual instrumental combinations and enthusiasm for experimentation. Musical influences are many and varied including English and American experimental music, Satie, Ives, Stravinsky, Scarlatti, Elizabethan music; also various kinds of jazz and popular music, Edwardian music-hall, folk music from around the world and the sound of bells.

Hugh has always been an enthusiastic and experienced pianist and was formerly an oboist as well as playing other less conventional instruments such as the toy piano and Irish tin whistle. Over the years he has composed for and performed in many new music ensembles including the Scratch Orchestra, Promenade Theatre Orchestra, the Shrapnel Wood and Metal Band and Vermilion. For many years Hugh taught music in inner city London Schools and ran evening classes in composition and song writing at London colleges.

Hugh is a member of the Performing Rights Society and the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.