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- Jouni Kaipainen
Piping Down The Valleys Wild, Op. 26 (1984)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Programme Note
The piece was commissioned by NOS (The Radio of the Netherlands) and Yleisradio (Finnish Broadcasting Company) together in 1984, and the premier took place in Hilversum, December 1985, in a concert that was broadcast both in the Netherlands and in Finland. It was played by Harry Sparnaay, the fabulous Dutch bass clarinet virtuoso, and his piano partner Polo de Haas. The piece was greatly inspired by Harry Sparnaay’s playing, which I heard in Helsinki in 1984. Thus Piping Down the Valleys Wild is loaded with utmost virtuosity – in fact, it is to a large extent made of things that I did not know before to exist at all in bass clarinet playing. After the first performance Sparnaay has played it a couple of times, but the piece has much more often been played by the young Finnish clarinetist Heikki Nikula, which proves that there also are other virtuosos in the field of bass clarinet.
The character of the piece is joyful and happy, but the enormous technical difficulties set an extra layer upon the piece – a layer of friction. The result is a happy state achieved with great efforts and pain – maybe it could be compared to the feeling that a circus artist gets while and after making his/her performance. I want to stress that the solo part really is extreme and that the friction brought about by the difficulties to deliberate; as all virtuoso-like pieces of music, Piping Down the Valleys Wild is very dependent on the performance: if the player is skillful enough, the matters technical disappear and we hear a merry, playful piece; but if the technique is perceptible, we hear something else, and still the whole of the piece may function properly.
The title is from the introductory poem of Songs of Innocence (1789) by William Blake, and in this context it is meant to underline the naïve, playful, jolly and innocent atmosphere of the basic music of the piece:
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
“Pipe a song about a Lamb!”
So I piped with merry chear.
“Piper, pipe that song again;”
So I piped: he wept to hear.
“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe,
Sing thy songs of happy chear.”
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.
“Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read.”
So he vanish’d from my sight,
And I pluck’d a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain’d the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
Jouni Kaipainen
The character of the piece is joyful and happy, but the enormous technical difficulties set an extra layer upon the piece – a layer of friction. The result is a happy state achieved with great efforts and pain – maybe it could be compared to the feeling that a circus artist gets while and after making his/her performance. I want to stress that the solo part really is extreme and that the friction brought about by the difficulties to deliberate; as all virtuoso-like pieces of music, Piping Down the Valleys Wild is very dependent on the performance: if the player is skillful enough, the matters technical disappear and we hear a merry, playful piece; but if the technique is perceptible, we hear something else, and still the whole of the piece may function properly.
The title is from the introductory poem of Songs of Innocence (1789) by William Blake, and in this context it is meant to underline the naïve, playful, jolly and innocent atmosphere of the basic music of the piece:
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
“Pipe a song about a Lamb!”
So I piped with merry chear.
“Piper, pipe that song again;”
So I piped: he wept to hear.
“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe,
Sing thy songs of happy chear.”
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.
“Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read.”
So he vanish’d from my sight,
And I pluck’d a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain’d the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
Jouni Kaipainen