Programme Notes
Ding Dong Bell (Bass Clarinet & Piano)
The idea for ‘Ding Dong Bell’ came after reading about the serious and often rather disturbing backgrounds behind children’s nursery rhymes. The piece is structured in three movements, played without a pause. The first movement is based on the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’ and the second on ‘Mary, Mary quite contrary’. The final movement alludes to the poem ‘Full Fathom Five’ from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’, although the starting point was the nursery rhyme ‘Ding Dong bell, Pussy’s in the well’.The musical material for the first and second movements is mainly drawn from fragments of the respective nursery rhyme melodies. However, towards the middle of the first movement an unrelated theme is introduced which is then used throughout rest of the work. The piece veers between the superficial and the sinister, and bells in various guises feature throughout.