Growing up in the 1960s I had a voracious appetite for science fiction, much of which suggested that by 2020 humanity would have advanced to the point of eliminating famine, poverty, war and ignorance, and we would be living in peace, prosperity and universally shared purpose. This century has been a great disappointment.

These thoughts permeated my mind while composing my new clarinet quintet, Concord. (From the Latin concordia, from con – ‘together’ and cor, cord – ‘heart’.) For decades we’ve been absorbing the impending doom of climate change, coupled with the obvious depletion of natural resources, but now face the added burden of two pandemics, one of simple opportunistic viruses, the other of global fundamentalist nationalism and its inevitable companion, the decimation of intelligent discourse.

So what use is polite chamber music to a world facing such a storm of extreme challenges, any one of which on its own could spell imminent extinction?

Carl Vine

Carl Vine. Photo © Keith Saunders.

Music has little power to affect societal change and I don’t want to delve into magazine music – music containing a ‘message’ to be conveyed to the audience by unknown means, probably...