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Bar Instruments (solo and with other instruments)

Percussion (also with other instruments)

A Homage to Deagan for percussion ensemble

Premiere: November 10, 1994 London, Queen Elizabeth Hall (UK) · Nexus
Instrumentation: percussion-Quintett
Orchestra instrumentation: Percussion 1: Crotales (with bow), Chocolo, Mark Tree; Percussion 2I: Song Bells (with bow), Chinese Cymbal, 3 Wood Blocks; Percussion 3: 2 Cymbals, 2 Triangles, Xylophone, Marimba (shared with Marimba II), Vibraphone (with bow); Percussion 4: 2 Cymbals, 2 Gongs, Marimba I (with low F), Maracas; Percussion 5: 2 low Tom-Toms, Marimba II (to low A)
Publisher: Schott Music Ltd., London
Duration: 20' 0''
Year of composition: 1994
Edition: score and parts
57 Pages
ISMN: 979-0-2201-1814-2
Order number: ED 12585

Price: 42.95 €
including VAT and plus delivery

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One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing (1994) was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain for the percussion quintet Nexus, and is a reflection on aspects of percussion history, both personal and musical. The members of Nexus are my friends (I played in the Steve Reich Ensemble along with Russ Hartenberger in 1972, the year after Nexus was formed). The piece aimed to demonstrate how a fine percussion ensmeble can be as musically expressive and subtle as, say, a string quartet. The piece starts from the last bar at the end of the second act of my opera Medea, a very short coda for a quintet of untuned percussion instruments during which the curtain falls. In this piece, however, this one apparently innocuous measure is progressively fragmented until it is taken over, little by little, by the addition of tuned percussion instruments. Eventually two metallophones (crotales and songbells) play aria-like material with bows, occasionally joined by the xylophone, and accompanied by marimba and xylophone ostinati. The piece ends with a coda in which phrases are passed from bowed vibraphone to bowed crotales, then to bowed songbells, supported by tremolos on the marimbas. The rare 3-octave songbells that Nexus owns is one of the American instrument maker J. C. Deagan's particularly fine instruments. The piece is effectively a kind of homage to Deagan, the Stradivarius of the tuned percussion world, who collaborated closely with Percy Grainger in the development of tuned percussion music between the wars. The allusions in the title are obvious: the "one last bar" is the last measure of music from my opera; the "song" is that of Deagan's songbells. In the case of "Joe" I wanted to link my father, Joe Bryars (who was a good amateur baritone singer) with Joseph Deagan and his songbells. However, some time after I had written the piece, Nexus's Bob Becker took me to one side and told me (gently) that the initial "J" in Deagan's name, in fact, stood for "John"

Gavin Bryars

Bryars · One Last Bar, Then Joe Can Sing · 45 second extract

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