Mise en Abyme Score and Parts - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.1885919

Mise en abyme is a literary and artistic technique whereby a composition contains a smaller version of itself to create a self-referential effect, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. This can be a ‘story-within-a-story’, for example, or an image within an image (such as in the Arnolfini Portrait of Jan van Eyck), or any other instance of a work mirroring or incorporating itself. The term originates from medieval heraldry and is intended to suggest a sense of infinite regression - an "abyss".

The opening theme of this piece (itself taken from a much earlier work: Two Pieces for Oboe and Piano, composed in 1988) provides the source material for every aspect of the music that follows. In Mise en Abyme I have attempted to convey this concept through processes of transformation and development to create an intense, highly concentrated and tightly focussed piece in which everything you hear is an image of the original idea - or at least contains elements of it; it is as if that earlier theme had been examined under a microscope and the new work composed from tiny particles of the old, assembled in such a way that the larger theme always remains evident.

Mise en Abime is very much about the musical interplay of the two protagonists, a sort of wordless theatre that explores many forms, hence the subtitle ‘Cabaret a Deux’. It was first performed by members of the Salus Trio: Sarah McNulty (flute) and Carmen Troncoso (treble recorder) in York on 29th November 2025.