incipits

An incipit is the series of words which appears at the beginning of a poem or other literary piece. The term is also applied to music where one may view the opening measure or measures of a piece of music in the context of an index.

In my work Catacombs from the year 2000, I used a book of orchestral excerpts for the flute as the basis of an entire concerto. I was drawn to the idea (and to the irony) of how an austere event such as an orchestral audition could be transformed into a musical experience in its own right for the general public. In incipits, I postulated what it mike be like if a musician seated at the piano never cared to leave the index page of musical examples - that is to say, what if this reference page was a complete musical statement in and of itself?

The index page in question is from a collection of keyboard sonatas by the rococo-period composer Domenico Scarlatti. For the most part, the source material for this work is drawn from the short two or three bar fragments which appear in the index, although the two complementary sections of the B-minor sonata (Longo 33) are used in their entirety, and serve as a kind of demarcating device with regards to the work's larger structure.

Unlike many of the other fragmentary pieces of my recent output, this work is more clearly broken into a smaller number of longer sections comprised of fragments which are unified by textural or gestural content. In addition, the breaks between fragments are no longer treated as indeterminate lengths, but rather as relations of the global tempo which is used from section to section, creating an illusion of pseudo-continuity.

Incipits was commissioned in 2001 by the Standing Wave ensemble through the Canada Council for the Arts.

Chris Paul Harman was born in 1970 in Toronto where he studied classical guitar, cello, and electronic music with Barton Wigg, Alan Stellings, and Wes Wraggett respectively. His works have been performed by many ensembles and orchestras in Canada and abroad, including the Asko Ensemble, the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Esprit Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the New Music Concerts Ensemble, the Noordhollands Philharmonisch, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Tokyo Symphony, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Harman has been commissioned by guitarists William Beauvais and Sylvie Proulx, violinist Jacques Israelievitch, oboist Lawrence Cherney, Continuum, the Esprit Orchestra, the Guelph Spring Festival, Music Canada 2000, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Nieuw Ensemble (Amsterdam,) the Trio Fibonacci, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, among others.

 In 1986, Chris Paul Harman was a finalist in the CBC Radio National Competition for Young Composers, and was the grand prize winner at the same competition in 1990. Iridescence, the work which earned him the grand prize, was subsequently awarded first prize in the under-30 category at the 1990 International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. At the 1994 International Rostrum of Composers, Harman's Concerto for Oboe and Strings was chosen as a recommended work in the general category for composers of all ages. Both works have been broadcast in some 25 countries.

In 2001, Mr. Harman's work Uta received an honourable mention at the Gaudeamus International Music Week. That same year, his work Amerika was awarded the Jules Leger Prize for new chamber music in Canada, and shortlisted for the Prix de Composition de la Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco. In 2007, Mr. Harman received the Jules Leger prize a second time for his work Postludio a rovescio.

Since June 2005, Mr.Harman has served as Assistant Professor of composition at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in Montreal.