I am excited to be creating music with Lipparella; they are an extraordinary ensemble for whom nothing seems to be impossible. I also find the challenge of writing for ‘early music’ ensembles particularly rewarding, because musicians who revive forgotten works, or who reinterpret music that we thought we knew, tend to bring the same inquisitive, questioning attitude to new music too. I am also excited to be writing for the instruments of Lipparella because each is a member of a quite different family – blockflute, fiddle, viol, lute – each with its own distinct way of making and sustaining sounds.
So the four dimensions of my title will be the four members of Lipparella, four different instrumental ancestries, and four dimensions of sound: points, lines, spaces, time. I also want to make a score that asks the musicians to think in different ways about playing together, using different combinations of words and signs to allow them sometimes to be autonomous individuals, sometimes to be in hierarchical relationships, sometimes to play together, sometimes in counterpoint. Above all I want to make music that is not old music or new music, but Lipparella music.
Christopher Fox
