my string quintet that plays for 2 hours 50 minutes
Welcome, Alastair. For those of us who don't know your work, do tell us the how and why of its great length.
The question is much easier than the answer, I fear; all I can really say is that that's the way it went - and had to go - although, that said, I was considerably surprised when I came to time the piece after completing it and found how long it seemed to be (and even then I underestimated it). I realise that this is not a very helpful answer, but I can't really offer anything better, in all honesty. The first four of its five movements are not of inordinate length - around 22, 7½, 10 and 3½ respectively; now you see where the "problem" lies! But that's the way the piece is...
That's very interesting - did you have any particular rough idea of what duration it might be likely to be when you started it (I'm just rather interested, in your case and with other composers, how much the composition process consists of the material germinating outwards, or how much the overall structure and proportions might be worked out at an earlier stage)?
Yes, I did, more or less - and it was woefully wrong, as it turned out. My assumptions about the durations of the first four movements did turn out to be reasonably accurate in practice, but I thought that the finale would be around ten minutes longer than the sum total of those four. To have underestimated that finale by so much seems absurd, in retrospect, yet I think that one reason why this happened was that I felt myself to be technically incapable of seeing it through once I'd embarked upon it, even though I had its whole shape more or less in place in my mind and, in the intervening years during which I worked on it abit, I probably lost contact with any sense of what its duration would finally be. As it was, when timing it after completing it, I was horrified to find that that last movement came to about an hour and three quarters, whereas in reality it turned out to be considerably more even than that, at about 2 hours 5 minutes; that said, I could and can do nothing about it, for that's the way it is. I have, quite understandably, been more than gratified to hear from at least one commentator that "there ought surely to be some longueurs; why aren't there any?"; it's not for me to say, of course, as it's a matter for each individual listener - all I could and can do is
hope that there are none. I might add, by the way, that its die was well and truly cast before I'd even heard of Sorabji!...
Best,
Alistair
