A concerto in six movements is not, strictly speaking, a concerto. It is a concerto that declined to stop. Cilwa has been pressed on the point more than once and has answered each time that he counted them the same way anybody else would have, and that six is simply what there were.

The manuscript is a single hand on six sheets, untitled on the front and numbered on the back—the sort of arrangement that keeps a scholarly career in motion for a decade. Dr. Hyacinth Trevelyan-Boake has argued at length that the sheets are in an order, that the order is not the numbered one, and that the numbering was added later by somebody else. Her proposed sequence has been recorded once, privately, and is not presented here.

None of the movements is named. Asked why, the composer replied that a title tells you what is about to happen and that he had gone to some trouble to arrange for it to be a surprise. The numbering below is therefore the whole of the editorial apparatus, and the listener is on their own—a state of affairs Cilwa has called "the correct relationship between a composer and an audience, and the reason programme notes exist, which is to spoil it."

The soloist is the same soloist, and is still anonymous. Following the correspondence occasioned by the First Concerto, the instruction to play harder has been allowed to stand.

Xylophone Concerto #2

By Paul S Cilwa

Listen to the complete concerto:

Now Playing:

◀◀ Previous Next ▶▶

The Movements

Each movement has a page of its own, and a player of its own, for those who would rather take the work a sheet at a time.

The material is laid out at once and without introduction, on the theory that a first movement should say what the piece is about and then stand aside. More about the first movement.

It runs to exactly the length of the first movement—to the sample—which one scholar regards as the key to the entire work and the composer regards as news. More about the second movement.

The work slows down for the first time, and asks of the xylophone the one thing a struck instrument cannot give it. More about the third movement.

Behaves for some minutes like a finale, and is not one. Audiences have been known to applaud here, and are forgiven. More about the fourth movement.

Short, single-minded, and the one movement the scholarship has found nothing to say about. More about the fifth movement.

The opening returns, changed, and the work ends—though not, this time, in the key it started in. More about the sixth movement.

Xylophone Concerto #2: 1st Movement

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/19/2026		Page Views: 55
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
The soloist arrives before anybody is quite ready, which is deliberate.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (145 words)

The concerto opens without ceremony of any kind. The soloist is simply there, playing, some while before the listener has finished settling—a habit carried over from the First Concerto, where it was likewise described as a structural decision and likewise arrived at by not writing an introduction.

Xylophone Concerto #2: 2nd Movement

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/19/2026		Page Views: 47
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
The same length as the first movement. Exactly the same length.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (160 words)

The one feature of this concerto that has genuinely resisted explanation is that the second movement runs to precisely the same length as the first. Not approximately, not near enough for programme notes—to the sample.

Xylophone Concerto #2: 3rd Movement

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/19/2026		Page Views: 53
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
The longest of the six, and in no hurry about it.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (132 words)

The longest movement in the concerto, and the one most conscious of the fact. It is here that the work first allows itself to slow down, having spent two movements demonstrating that it could keep up.

Xylophone Concerto #2: 4th Movement

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/19/2026		Page Views: 49
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
Where a four-movement concerto would have ended, this one does not.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (105 words)

A concerto of ordinary construction would finish here, and for a considerable stretch this movement behaves as though it intends to. Listeners encountering the work for the first time have been observed to applaud.

Xylophone Concerto #2: 5th Movement

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/19/2026		Page Views: 46
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
The shortest of the second half, and the least willing to explain itself.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (108 words)

The briefest movement of the back half, and the one that has attracted the least commentary, a distinction its composer regards as an achievement rather than a slight.

Xylophone Concerto #2: 6th Movement

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/19/2026		Page Views: 42
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
The work finally stops, having taken two movements longer than usual to decide to.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (138 words)

The concerto ends, as it began, with the soloist and no particular ceremony—a symmetry Cilwa has confirmed was intentional, which is one more confirmation than the First Concerto ever got out of him.