Menagerie

(written 1998-2000)

Menagerie is a set of three songs using humorous children’s verse about animals.  Songs i) and ii) were written for workshop performances by Jane Manning. Before writing the first piece I listened to some recordings of Jane singing to familiarise myself with her voice.  All the songs are written with her voice in mind.

i) The Crocodile Song
The primary musical inspiration for this is Stravinsky whose Owl and the Pussycat seemed close to what I wanted to do with this text.  In the same way as the Stravinsky is written without bar-lines, I started off by writing without a strict metrical hierarchy.  I later decided that I was going to have to use bar-lines.  Even so, phasing and a lack of a strictly unified metric organisation between the parts are preserved.

ii)  Hippo Song
This piece was written easily and quickly.  I tried to take on board the knowledge and experience gained from the first workshop.

ii)  The Pig
The Pig was written whilst researching postmodernism in music.  I decided to use a kind of collage technique, although all of the material is original pastiche rather than quotation.