Score and parts on special sale from the Hire Library

The colour of this work comes from the instrumentation (used by both Beethoven and Brahms in their clarinet trios). Here the cello is often placed higher than the clarinet, which is mostly kept low in the dark, ‘chalumeau’, register. The piano tends to stand alone. A scherzo and a slow movement lurk within the piece, but broken up into shards and roughly glued together. The fragments include piano chorales (which bookend the piece), lyrical moments and hockets (where one line hops playfully between different instruments). A Dramolet is short, about five minutes long. I’ve borrowed the title from the Swiss writer Robert Walser, whose writing became more and more condensed. His microscopic texts (written in miniscule pencil writing) are complex and allusive montages.

© John Woolrich