Clerihews

CLERIHEWS (1991)

A Clerihew is a four-line poem invented in the early 19OOs by the writer E. Clerihew Bentley. It is normally biographical and normally absurd. Perhaps the most well-known Clerihew is the one which appears first in the piece :

Sir Christopher Wren
Said "I'm going to dine with some men.
If anybody calls
Say I am designing St Paul's.

Laurie Dunkin Wedd's Clerihews sets nine of these verses, the other subjects being the Abbe Liszt, Miss Mae West, Mr Oscar Wilde, Herodotus, Napoleon, Cecil B. de Mille, Professor Dewar (eminent chemist of the period, noted for his work on gases and for the invention of the vacuum flask) and finally the Italian cleric Savonarola.

A note in the score indicates two objectives for the piece, the first
being 'To amuse' and the second 'To investigate string techniques'. In pursuit of the second aim, there is a long section which consists entirely of a four note phrase (reflecting the four lines of a clerihew} repeated no fewer than twenty times; interest is maintained by employing a battery of common and less common styles of playing, idiomatic for string instruments (a sort of Young Person's Guide to the String Quartet).

The light touch of the composition is apparent not only in the humorous text. At one point, the score is marked Homage to Haydn's Op33 No3. String quartet lovers will recognise this as the quartet nicknamed The Bird; in a central section the two violins have a little light-hearted duet, very like birdsong. Laurie Dunkin Wedd has adopted Haydn's idea, but working on the basis that Haydn depicted the everyday sounds of his time, has reproduced some rather more modern sounds which will no doubt be recognisable to a twentieth century audience.

The third and final strand in the piece, as in so much of his work, is a jazz influence, reflected in the theme which opens and closes the work, and in a section for strings in which they are directed to extemporise.