Prelude, Blues and Postlude for clarinet & piano Op.9

An early work, completed in 1984. It was premiered by Peter Cornish and composer Francis Pott at the London College of Music in 2009, and performed by Anna Hashimoto and Andrew Saunders at London University the following year.

In his program notes for the piece Francis Pott observes that “certain of Sainsbury’s works reveal a sensitive personal response to American music, with occasional oblique echoes of Carter, Copland and Barber, some of which can be detected in the Prelude, Blues and Postlude”. Describing the work itself, he writes:

“The Prelude, a seamlessly lilting introduction, balances a warmly lyrical harmonic palette with something of the sparse textural austerity we find in some of Copland’s musical landscapes; it serves also as a counterpoise in general weight and duration to the droll Postlude, where sly understatement is apparent in both the brevity of the music and its throwaway ending. Between comes a lengthier, streetwise, heavily accentuated slow Blues movement, transporting us rapidly from the open plains to nocturnal urban surroundings. Though the composer’s sense of humour is never far beneath the surface, an undercurrent of evocative melancholy persists until the Postlude blows it finally away. A model of its kind, such a piece is more haunting than possibly its composer consciously intended, and serves to remind one of Auden’s contention that a demotic kind of language is essential to the communication of true poetry.”

© Francis Pott, 2009