Karui

Watch / listen

Helmi Malmgren, quartertone clarinet, Veli Kujala, quartertone accordion

Live recording from Uuden Musiikin Lokakuu Festival, September 29, 2018

Score / parts

Instrumentation and duration

Quartertone clarinet and quartertone accordion

Duration: 11 minutes

Commission / dedications

Commissioned by Lauri Sallinen and Veli Kujala with funding from the Sibelius Fund

First performance

Helmi Malmgren, clarinet and Veli Kujala, quarter tone accordion, Uuden Musiikin Lokakuu Festival, Tulindberg hall, Oulu Music Centre, Oulu, Finland, September 29, 2018

Composer's Notes

For me, Karui is a leap into a new area, a world of microintervals. In some of my previous works I have occasionally used microintervals to color the twelve-tone equal temparament, but in the past microintervals – in the case of Karui, the equally tempered quarter tones – have not played a significant role in my music.

My growing interest in the power of music to influence the receiver's perceptions and experiences of time and surroundings around themselves has led me to focus on the resonant qualities of the tones. Microintervals bring a lot of new dimensions into the play.

With the melodic and harmonious possibilities offered by the quarter tone clarinet and the quarter tone accordion, I became mostly preoccupied with fragile sound surfaces, and the more or less traditional development of the musical material is deliberately left out. The slowly moving microtonal harmonies and melodic figures invite the listener to come to a halt – to stop and dwell into the fragile sonic world of Karui.

I would like to warmly thank Lauri Sallinen and Veli Kujala for the commission and the Sibelius Fund for their support towards this commission and the Finnish Cultural Foundation for supporting my work during the year 2018.