Aims, Goals, Targets and Objectives is dedicated to The Lindsays, the resident string quartet at the University of Manchester from 1979 until 2005, and served as a retirement gift when they requested a farewell work based on Haydn's op.74, no.3 in G minor. At the time, the inanities of bureaucratic form-filling inspired me to view the Haydn as an exercise in meeting my local Esterhazy requirements. For example, Franz Joseph may have been
required to compose four movements and fill up a certain amount of musical time by using "X" number of themes, thus fulfilling some pre-determined goal. I also became fixated with his use of cadences, those clichés which - like taxes and form-filling - are unavoidable. After all, cadences are the aims, the goals, maybe the targets or objectives, of each musical phrase.
The premiere was given by The Lindsays on 3 October 2003 with subsequent performances in 2004 by The Ukrainian String Quartet in Kiev and Stillman Quartet in Salford in 2005. It has been recorded by the New World Quartet on Campion CAMEO2071 in 2007, and on Prima Facie PFCD015 in 2012.
- ISMN: 9790570683376 (M570683376)