Andrew Toovey : Yunomi (2020) Percussion Quartet played by the Bremer Schlagzeugensemble

Andrew Toovey : Yunomi (2020) Percussion Quartet played by the Bremer Schlagzeugensemble

Randfestspiele, Zepernick, Berlin Germany 28/08/2020
Bremer Schlagzeugensemble, Percussion Quartet performers:
Hsin Lee
Moritz Koch
Ramon Gardella
Olaf Tzschoppe (Leitung)

Film and recording by Henry Mex and Dietrich Petzold.

Yunomi (2020) for Percussion Quartet
Dedicated to Christo (d.31/05/2020 aged 84) and to Olaf Tzschoppe.
Principle instruments:
1 Crotales. 2 Marimba. 3 Vibraphone. 4 Untuned Percussion.

Duration is unspecified but c.15 minutes and beyond suggested.

Composer thoughts/Programme Note: Imagine looking through various volumes of notated folk music collections. As you turn the pages, singing some in your head, thinking about small fragments of melodic or rhythmic ideas and connections between the music. Thinking, if and how these pieces connect together, blend together, perhaps like making a puzzle of the material. The title, Yunomi (a small Japanese teacup) used for daily and informal tea drinking and often a beautifully and unique decorative ceramic brought to my mind the fact that often tea sets are generally made to be uniform in design. I wanted each part of this piece to be separate, a collage of ideas, but potentially able to become part of something whole. Yunomi when spoken sounds like the English, You know me, which can be connected in various ways to this piece. Perhaps these fragments of music are reminding us that they have both similar and individual roots and histories?
There are many different possibilities as to how Yunomi can be performed. The note at the start of the piece explains some of this, but I didn't want to go into too much more detail as I want the performers to make decisions and think about how they might put this piece together.

For example one way of doing the piece might be to use bows and play just the first notes of each bar in some of the fragments slowly and quietly, or to just interplay odd bars randomly and see what textures are produced - or to play fuller parts of each fragment and see how they interlock.

This piece also grew in the present time of musicians and performers having to adapt to generally not being able to perform together. How to be creative in this time and still work with like-minded people on music that would usually be performed in a live venue is a reality for the moment. I have seen and enjoyed on my computer screen a lot of streamed events that are put together in so many different ways. I realise that Yunomi could be performed and filmed from the homes of four percussionists living in different parts of the world, or it could be muti-tracked by one person. It could be a documentary about how to put music together that blends ideas effectively or shows that it is difficult to layer and make the material fit a conventional scenario or structure. The possibilities are many, varied and I hope eventually effective, there is no goal or set solution for Yunomi.

Performance Note: All four players have rhythmic notation only sections that can use an array of unspecified untuned, or potentially tuned instruments. For example gongs, cow-bells, etc. Or alternate ad lib with collections of instruments that have high, medium and low sounds. The fourth percussionist is only specified rhythmic material and can decide ad lib to use instruments that alternate between a mixture of H.M.L. sounds, for example woodblocks, tom-toms, bongos, cymbals etc. and/or a variety of other instruments, including home-made and original ones.
In the opening pages a semblance of fairly usual connections is established. The exception to this is the fourth percussionist who can interject fragments from their A-I material ad lib. The performers are given material that is either completely individual to them (fragments A to I) or fragments 1-7 which (indicated by one of the performers) can start at any time discussed during rehearsal. Fragments 1-7 should be performed complete and in the given order, but placement, speed and dynamics decided upon collectively. Fragments 1-7 are adapted to the ranges of the melodic instruments - one octave crotales, marimba, vibraphone. Fragments A-I do not have to be performed in that specific order and smaller fragments can be taken from each fragment and repeated and if wished joined to other fragments or performed in a variety of combinations. All tempo, dynamics and subtleties within the spectrum are ad lib and should usually adapt according to their context with what the other performers are doing.

Information on Andrew Toovey music and PDF's of Yunomi and all other scores can be seen at www.andrewtoovey.co.uk