For Solo Piano

Monos II, for solo piano, was composed in 1970 for Roger Woodward, who gave the first performance in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on April 25 1971.

A brief, but tightly controlled outpouring of violent emotion, it had the effect of bringing to an abrupt close the work of Ross Edwards’ student years, whilst giving no hint of the lucid tranquility of much of his subsequent music.

Soon after the first performance, the London music critic Meredith Oakes made the following observations:

‘Monos II seems to express the imminent flying apart of a system. Points are made only to be undermined, extraordinary surges of effort lead to nothing. There is a checked savagery like a scorpion under glass, and a rhetorical fervour that preserves the idea of music as something closely linked to spoken language, capable of development, sophistication and compression in the context of an established usage. The score’s detailed instructions concerning dynamics, articulation and phrasing spring from this idea, as do many of the musical shapes – short upbeats that give the impression of iambic utterance; little chromatic runs that act as conjunctions or releases of breath; frequent repetition of strongly characterised rhythmic cells. Towards the end of the piece, the passionate impulse is parodied and ultimately destroyed.’

 

Monos II