Program Note

This piece (“bags of insatiable scissors” in French) is an arrangement for septet of three earlier pieces of mine: I. Sachets de la famille from Im Januar am Nil [1984] for eleven players, entirely pentatonic with a Sibelius quote leading to a pistol shot and further quotes from Semtana, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Stravinsky played on the clainet, II. Les Ciseaux de Tom Johnson [1998] for piano trio, written to celebrate that composer’s 60th birthday as a geometric treatment of his written name, and III. Elle l’a vue, elle l’a bue, la pomme insatiable (from Four Identical Pieces [1995] for solo piano), with tango0like 3:4 rhythms and quotes from Bizet and the Beatles. It was premiered by Ensemble Correspondance in 2002, in Aachen, Germany. – Clarence Barlow