Clarinet Quintet: In Prairial and Thermidor is the third of three pieces based on works by the great Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay, each work being in a different medium, though all are text-based. The quintet, in two movements - A Litany for Prairial and A Requiem for Thermidor - is derived from an artist´s book, A Litany A Requiem. Printed on, alternately, red, white and blue paper, it contains on successive pages the following texts:
A Litany for Prairial
Angelique
Tilleul
Pavot
Serpolet
Chevrefueille
Thym

A Requiem for Thermidor
Fleuriot
Hanriot
Couthon
Payan
Robespierre
Saint-Just

A list of plants from the month of Prairial (May-June in the French Revolutionary Calendar) is set against a list of those revolutionaries guillotined along with Robespierre in the month of Thermidor (July-August). A note explains that the fatal day was named Arrosoir (watering can).
Each movement is in six sections (one for each plant, or revolutionary). The proportions, metres and key structures of the two movements are identical, so that the second is an exact structural reprise of the first. The music of A Litany for Prairial is fast, lively and (mostly) pastoral, while A Requiem for Thermidor is slow, largely subdued and funereal. There is no attempt to characterise any plant or person, although Robespierre is commemorated with an anguished shriek, and Saint-Just by a pianissimo chorale over an inexorable cello ostinato.
Clarinet Quintet: In Prairial and Thermidor was written to a private commission and was first performed by Andrew Sparling and the Brindisi Quartet at the Tate Gallery on June 13th 1996.
Duration 19 minutes