Cascade is a short piece for a mixed quartet of clarinet, bassoon, violin, and viola composed as part of the Britten Sinfonia's Opus1 programme. Musically, the piece is driven by a number of instabilities (harmonic, metrical, rhythmic, thematic, textural and so on) to produce a largely through-composed exploration of the musical results when these instabilities are variously contrasted and combined. While the piece has no explicity programmatic content, the image of flowing water was one which served as a useful visual metaphor during the composition process, and performers and listeners are welcome to interpret the course of the piece with reference to this image if they so wish.

Elliott Park, 2021