Joe Stollery

This is a passacaglia for a quintet of flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello. The title cryptically refers to the flute playing a quasi-solo role in between the variations of the piece, each one becoming more frantic in tempo and dynamic to the point of disintegration. I wanted to convey the impression of being stuck asleep in a dream before being forced awake, and to help depict such familiar yet surreal fantasies prevalent within this dream, I have designed the main passacaglia to allude to a tonal key (E minor) yet at the same time wander through all the chromatic notes, as well as give a sense of regular rhythm within an unconventional time signature (11/4). As the piece progresses, this theme, starting out in relative convention, soon goes through various internal transformations, becoming quicker and louder, before breaking off altogether after the climax. The final section is a very sparse, ghostly commentary on what came before, a bit like trying to recall the dream from the night before.

Like The Skene Obsession and Seely Circles, I created this piece to help explore a facet of my autism in a musical-dramatic way, in this case the idea of being stuck in a routine and desperately trying to break out of it.