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Monos II (1970)
for solo piano
Ross Edwards
Monos II,
for solo piano, was composed in 1970 for Roger Woodward, who gave the first
performance in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on April 25 1971.
A brief, but tightly controlled
outpouring of violent emotion, it had the effect of bringing to an abrupt
close the work of Ross Edwards' student years, whilst giving no hint of
the lucid tranquility of much of his subsequent music.
Soon after the first performance,
the London music critic Meredith Oakes made the following observations:
'Monos II seems
to express the imminent flying apart of a system. Points are made only
to be undermined, extraordinary surges of effort lead to nothing. There
is a checked savagery like a scorpion under glass, and a rhetorical
fervour that preserves the idea of music as something closely linked
to spoken language, capable of development, sophistication and compression
in the context of an established usage. The score's detailed instructions
concerning dynamics, articulation and phrasing spring from this idea,
as do many of the musical shapes - short upbeats that give the impression
of iambic utterance; little chromatic runs that act as conjunctions
or releases of breath; frequent repetition of strongly characterised
rhythmic cells. Towards the end of the piece, the passionate impulse
is parodied and ultimately destroyed.'
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