Michael Jarrell

Music for a While

Music for a While is a direct reference to the air by Henry Purcell, taken from his incidental music to the play 'Oedipus'. I was originally concerned with creating an ephemeral atmosphere which should be the soul of the work, for I wanted to compose music of a single moment that would ceaselessly reinvent itself, music that would be permanently renewed yet have a constant regard to its roots. I had already begun writing the piece when I decided to add on a sort of prologue in which I would establish a direct link with Purcell's music, and for this I took the first four bars of the continuo of Purcell's air and transformed them. Gradually this fragment became the basis of Music for a while. This work was composed for the Klangforum ensemble, and is dedicated to Klaus Huber on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Michael Jarrell,translated by Mary Criswick