Jonny Greenwood

Jonny Greenwood talks about Doghouse, his orchestral piece, alongside the person who liaised between him and the orchestra.

The idea came from music libraries, rooms full of scores written to be played once for a radio broadcast and then discarded or lost. He has never been to one and suspects the reality would disappoint him, but what caught him was that this was more or less the last period in which music was written on paper and allowed to decay. He took texture from it rather than pastiche.

He was taught as a child that the way to find D on a piano is to picture a dog living in a house between the two black keys, and the piece kept gathering around that note, hence the title.

There are three soloists, on violin, viola and cello. Partly he wanted to treat members of the orchestra as soloists because they play so well, and partly, he admits, he did not have the nerve to write a real concerto for a single instrument.

The five movements run as one, and their titles come mostly from the places they were written, kept as reminders of how each was found.