I've been cogitating harmlessly to myself about how and when in the compositional process the composer realised that the two parts should be separated rather than being in a single continuous movement. I don't know if anyone here would like to comment on that at all, or maybe not.
George, your harmless self-cogitation led me to enquire of Mr Butler (for indeed he is a near neighbour). He informs me that the 'idea' (composers!
) was that the short first part should act as a prelude to the longer second part, forming a 'structural upbeat' to it (composers!
) and to some extent reflecting in miniature its course of events, and its 'energy curve' (composers!
), with the exception of the final fast 'fairground ride'. In the second performance, the gap between the two sections was considerably foreshortened and much more effective, to Mr Butler's mind, for that. It is, he opines, a manifestation of his interest in bipartite structures in general ('cf. Lutoslawski' he rather gnomically threw into our conversation - composers, eh!
)
Whether or not such a strategy has meaning or not is, of course, a subjective matter. He tells me.
