Joe Stollery

This is a set of ten short character duets designed for wind quintet, each based on a fable by Aesop.

Each of the ten duos features a different combination of two players from the ensemble, and the set is ordered so to allow rests for every musician in between. I have made use of several auxiliary doublings in a few duets as well to further enhance some characters (see Synopsis for details).

There are also two [optional] ‘menageries’ for the whole ensemble to play as an entr’acte and finale to the duo-set. These essentially give all the characters from the fables both an introduction, and in the finale a platform to review the events of their fables between one another. The various characters are marked out in the score to help guide the players to the appropriate roles.

I came up with the idea of these duos while observing at the Cheltenham Composer’s Academy 2016, where the first manifestations of it were in a few sketches that were played by members of the Dr K Sextet. I have always been fascinated by Aesop’s fables and the concise, often brutal points made in the fables about the faults of humanity. This has led me to devise a set of ten short wind duos, each one inspired by a certain fable (albeit on a somewhat abstract level), where the instruments take on the characters of the animals described, as well as the roles of hubris and nemesis, symbolically acting out the morals by their contrapuntal interactions.

I was partly inspired by a previous piece of mine for wind duet (The Twa Corbies (2013)), in which a flute and clarinet take on the characteristics of the two ravens, and act out the ballad of the title in a symbolic manner.

As such, these pieces are more symbolic than descriptive of the fables selected here. They are basically dialogues between two instruments which serves the objective purpose of having the opposing archetypes of hubris and nemesis coming together to create the plots. The structure of each fable has often helped to give a sound musical form to each duo, as described in the synopsis below.

[The idea of writing animal-based pieces for winds has been of particular interest to me. I have often felt that wind instruments essentially breathe life to these beasts, and furthermore that when the musician gives his breath to that vessel, he essentially ‘masks’ himself as that character.]

I wanted to try and give these duos a comically theatrical tone, and as such there are also a few dramatic effects in the score that can be exploited, in particular certain players can move offstage to visually enhance certain fables (as in the last two duos).