INTERNAL/external - all the live harpsichord material in the piece is performed by playing the strings directly, rather than via the keyboard. It also provides the visual spectacle of the performer delving into the guts of the instrument as if performing some bizarre surgical operation.  In metaphorical terms this is significant, since one of the aims of the piece is to extract from within the harpsichord (by force if necessary) music which lies beneath the surface of its traditional repertoire.

INTERIOR/exterior - a second and complementary aim of the work is to take the audience from their usual position outside the instrument and put them, as it were, inside.  The harpsichord becomes the concert hall, with the audience seated among giant plectra, strings, dampers and the rest of the its internal machinery.  This imagery is made possible by placing microphones inside the instrument, very close to the strings, the sound of which is then projected around the hall by a multi-speaker sound diffusion system.

INTROVERT/extrovert - like the earlier Storm-song for piano and tape, INT/ext is, broadly speaking, constructed from two types of material: one bold, arrogant and even violent, the other subdued, reflective and lyrical.  The two types are heard both in isolation and in fusion, and it is in the latter context that their identities become confused and blurred - an idea hinted at by the title, with extrovert upper-case letters for ‘introvert’ and introvert lower-case for ‘extrovert’.

INT/ext was commissioned by Vivienne Spiteri with funds made available by the Arts Council of Great Britain.  It was composed in the early months of 1991 in the Electroacoustic Music Studios of the University of Birmingham, England, and was given its first performance by Vivienne Spiteri in Warsaw in the same year.

© 1991 A P Lewis, University of Wales, Bangor. All Rights Reserved.