After Shock (2015)
(a drama for wind quintet)

The wind quintet, After Shock, was commissioned by Peter Jopling in 2015 as part of his 60th Birthday celebrations. The work was first performed at Peter's private birthday party in the Salon of the Melbourne Recital Centre on August 2, 2015, and a month later given a public first performance at the Australian National Academy of Music by the Sculthorpe Wind Quintet.

This one-movement wind quintet opens abruptly, almost like a musical heart attack. A sudden shock to the system sets the piece in motion, immediately unsettling the listener and establishing a sense that something has gone wrong, or is about to.

From this opening jolt, the music unfolds as a continuous journey through a familiar place after dark. It is shaped by heightened perception, when curiosity and apprehension sit side by side, and when ordinary streets can feel charged with unease.

The music moves between contrasting states. Lighter, almost playful gestures are interrupted by more searching and volatile material. Rhythms tighten and loosen, lines overlap, and the ensemble alternates between intimacy and friction. Throughout the work, the bassoon plays a particularly prominent and virtuosic role, acting at times as instigator, commentator, and destabilising presence within the group.

The momentum of the piece is driven less by events than by awareness, as if something once taken for granted is being quietly re-examined.

Rather than offering resolution, the work settles into an ambiguous calm. What remains is a lingering sense of unease, and the quiet persistence of unanswered questions. 

I am grateful to my colleagues in the Sculthorpe Wind Quintet who inspired every twist and turn of the compositional process and were extremely helpful in the first rehearsals by suggesting improvements and changes. I am also grateful to the Arcadia Quintet, who have taken the piece into their hearts and gave their first of many public performances at the Port Fairy Festival in October 2015.  

Paul Dean