game i for lîla

This playful, virtuoso work for solo clarinet in B-flat was commissioned by the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO) for the final round of their ‘Overseas Scholarship for Instrumentalists’ competition in 1996. It was the prescribed South African piece and incorporates two traditional tunes from southern Africa, ‘Shosholoza’ and ‘Jikele maweni ndiyahamba’, as well as a syncopated chord sequence typical of the South African township style called ‘mbaqanga’. Reddy used his daughter’s name in the title: Lîla. The present score of game 1 for lîla is based on the latest of several authoritative sources that Reddy left, which include an autograph manuscript, two early printouts with Reddy’s annotations, the proofs of the SAMRO score, and later versions of the piece that Reddy made on Sibelius for cello (2007) and tenor sax (2008). (These can be made available on request.) The score is prefaced by Reddy’s ‘Composer’s notes for the performer’, which contain useful ‘explanations of both conventional and unconventional notation’ in the piece.

game 1 for lîla has become quite well-known internationally, as the audio recording below shows, and there are several recordings on Youtube of which the one featured below was made at a memorial concert for Surendran Reddy in Johannesburg in 2010.