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Work


the improbable ordered dance

for full orchestra

Year:  2000   ·  Duration:  18m
Instrumentation:  3334; 4331; hp; pf; timp., perc. (3 players); strings | (Perc: extensive standard percussion)

Year:  2000
Duration:  18m
Instrumentation  3334; 4331; hp; pf; timp., ...

Films, Audio & Samples

Gillian Whitehead: the impr...

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Gillian Whitehead: the impr...

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Kenneth Young introduces 'T...

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Sample Audio

Sample: 17'00" - 18'00"

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Sample Audio

Sample: Excerpt from 'the improbable ordered dance' performed by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya

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Sample Score

Sample: Instrumentation page; Pages 1-8 of score

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Borrow/Hire:

To borrow items or hire parts please email SOUNZ directly at info@sounz.org.nz.

About

In his 1974 collection 'The lives of a Cell', Lewis Thomas wrote a memorable essay devoted to the spectrum of sound made by all living creatures. He believes that as well as producing sounds in every possible way to send messages to their own kind, all creatures have the urge to make some kind of music. The rhythmic sounds emitted by all creatures might, Lewis suggests 'be the recapitulation of something else - an earliest memory, a score for the transformation of inanimate random matter in chaos into the improbable ordered dance of living forms.' It was this essay, together with my fascination in the rediscovery of the part of Auckland I knew as a young child, that have shaped this piece.

The basis of the piece is the twelve possible three-note groups which function to form molecular structures - harmonic, textural, gestural, melodic - some simple, some complex, often symmetrical. The piece could be regarded as part of a classical tradition, in that it focuses primarily on balance of pitch and orchestration rather than on gesture or programmatic elements, and places the instrumental writing well within the range of the instruments rather than exploiting their extremes.

The improbable ordered dance is in a single movement and begins with a ghostly chant-like melody over a drone; this recurs in different forms several times during the piece. A transition section based on transformed sounds of nocturnal birds leads to a metrically free 'dawn chorus'. The following chorale-like passages and the rapid sections that follow are part of a restless upward-moving continuum which can never settle nor ever finish. The later sections of the piece recycle, combine and finally dissipate the earlier material.


Commissioned note

Composed in 2000 while Gillian Whitehead was composer-in-residence for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra


Contents note

One movement


Performance history

31 May 2001: Performed by the Auckland Philharmonia conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya in the Auckland Town Hall, Auckland

12 May 2006: Performed by the NZSO, conductor Kenneth Young

05 May 2016: Performed by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, music director Giordano Bellincampi at the Auckland Town Hall, 5 May 2016

Performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marc Taddei

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