You’re a Fisherman’s Bassoon

2017

eight bassoons

8’00”

Awards:

Nominated - Scottish New Music Awards 2017

Whilst shopping with my wife, a friend of ours approached her and exclaimed, "You're a fisherman's bassoon!". At least, that's what she thought he said. In fact, he’d said, "Eurovision must be soon!". I thought, there and then, that this would be a great title for a piece about half-hearing and misunderstanding.

During the summer of 2017, I became uncomfortably fond of winning songs from the Eurovision Song Contest from 1956 to the present day, having spent a great deal of time listening to them in depth. They became my earworms throughout most of that summer and it was usually the ones I hated - Brotherhood of Man’s Save Your Kisses for Me (1976), Johnny Logan’s What’s Another Year (1980), Dana’s All Kinds of Everything (1970) - that would wake me up in the middle of the night. But also, I began to wallow in the mock-Baroque chord sequence of the refrain from Lulu’s Boom Bang-a-Bang (1969) and the intense harmonic passages in Conchita Wurst’s Rise Like a Phoenix (2014), both of which feature strongly in the piece. In fact, no less than 34 quotations from past winners appear; some of them might be instantly recognisable, but many will be half-heard, at most.

The piece is not meant to be taken terribly seriously.