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- Cheryl Frances-Hoad
Algernon (2019)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Commissioned by Jonathan Radford and the Royal Over-Seas League
Programme Note
Algernon is loosely inspired by both Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and The Voices
Within, a popular science book by Charles Fernyhough about ‘the history and science of how
we talk to ourselves’. I was fascinated by Fernyhough's description of the development of
inner speech from infancy to young adulthood, from social dialogue with others, through
private speech (talking to oneself), to inner speech and inner dialogic speech (where we are
able to have complex discussions and debates with ourselves without uttering an audible
word). The case studies and scientific research detailed in the book gave me many ideas for
the melodic and motivic material of this five-minute work for alto saxophone and piano.
At the time of writing I had just reread Keyes' science-fiction classic, in which Algernon, a laboratory mouse, undergoes surgery to dramatically increase his intelligence (before Charlie Gordon, the first human involved in the experiment, undergoes the same operation). The arc of the novel (where both man and mouse become geniuses, before their heightened intelligence deteriorates) influences the structural and emotional shape of this piece.
© Cheryl Frances-Hoad 2019
At the time of writing I had just reread Keyes' science-fiction classic, in which Algernon, a laboratory mouse, undergoes surgery to dramatically increase his intelligence (before Charlie Gordon, the first human involved in the experiment, undergoes the same operation). The arc of the novel (where both man and mouse become geniuses, before their heightened intelligence deteriorates) influences the structural and emotional shape of this piece.
© Cheryl Frances-Hoad 2019