Four Fables

Four Fables was written for and commissioned by Robert Plane and the Gould Trio. The instrumental combination of clarinet, violin, cello and piano was made famous by Messiaen with his Quartet for the End of Time, but when I started composing my new piece, I had Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (for clarinet, viola and piano) in the back of my mind. Schumann was interested in the “picturesque and the fanciful” but left no link to specific fairy tales. This was a similar starting point for me, when writing these four varied fables.