Joe Stollery

The piece was inspired by the Scottish legend of the Kelpie, a malevolent water demon often in the form of a horse, who is said to lure human victims to their death by offering a ride across the stream they haunt and then drowning them. In this case, the accordion represents the Kelpie, and the interplay between it and the clarinet takes on an increasingly frantic dialogue until the latter is 'caught' in the climax. To represent the horse, the gradual build-up in rhythm for each successive section was loosely inspired by the equine gaits of ‘walk’, ‘trot’, ‘canter’ and ‘gallop’, and there are various tremolos in the accordion at frequent points to give impressions of an almost supernatural ‘whinnying’. For me, the contrast between the mechanisms of the two instruments provides further symbolism to this piece, in the way the ‘breathing’ of the accordion seems to give a sense of a fantastical entity, against the more ‘natural’ stance of the directly blown clarinet.

The piece was composed as a commission from Drake Music Scotland.

PERFORMANCES:

Première: 25 Oct 2023 - soundfestival 2023; King’s College Chapel - Heather Roche (clarinet) and Eva Zollner (accordion)