Fast Forward (saxophone quartet version)

Notes

In 1989, I was approached to contribute a work for a British Heart Foundation fund-raising concert, preferably a work with minimalist sensibility. At the time, I was a peripatetic music teacher, encouraging my students to beaver away at scales and arpeggios necessary to pass practical music exams. I longer to hear my students play them fast and furiously and confidently.

Rather perversely, I fulfilled the commission with music at tempo vivace – surely not appropriate for those with heart disease. The work is a sort of Philip Glass-meets-Steven Spielberg-in-overdrive, a work which borders on the absence of content, save a self-conscious assertion of style fulfilled entirely by scales and arpeggios.

The work was originally completed for harpsichord (part of a suite called Minimal Levels), and has undergone various incarnations. The Apollo Saxophone Quartet and PRISM Quartet have performed the version for saxophone quartet, and the string quartet version is issued on ACS Classics by the Camerata Ensemble.