Compositional Process and Craft
The Example of Michael Jarrell’s Trei II (1983)
Antonin Servière
Antonin Servière undertakes to offer the reader an in-depth analysis of Michael Jarrell’s composition processes, taking Trei II (1983) as an example. A brief introduction dealing with the composer’s own thoughts is followed by a precise, exhaustive examination of the manuscripts, the composer’s sources of inspiration and his references, leading to a list of the different steps in the genesis of the work. In a second part, Servière reflects on writing techniques and their “function” in Jarrell’s craft (thus pitch organisation, processes of material proliferation and superimposed tempi). The analysis ends with this very question of craft, so crucial to the composer, and considers the status of constraint in his compositional work.
