Year composed: 2015
Duration: 10′
Instrumentation: bass clarinet, cello, percussion, piano
Notes:
My work for bass clarinet, cello, percussion, and piano, Lift-up-over-sounding, is based on two lines from a poem by John Campion:
“World a tuning fork/ lift-up-over sounding.”
The lines in his poem are a literal translation of the words dulugu ganalan in the Bosavi language of Papua New Guinea. Their term refers to both the sound world of the Bosavi rainforest and the musical forms created by its inhabitants. In the poem, Campion describes a living, canopied sound world in the Papua New Guinea rain forest and its resonant space. The piece is a reworking and recasting of a composition from 2001 called World A Tuning Fork, which was originally for amplified soprano sax, double bass, percussion, piano, and fixed media. I chose sonorities loosely based on the overtone series of the double bass’ open strings (E, A, D, and G), and used the piano’s sostenuto pedal (the middle pedal) to capture the lowest octave ringing throughout. The musical material alternates between large expressive soliloquies played by the bass clarinet, and a cyclical set of repetitions played by the entire quartet.
The piece is dedicated to John Campion, and premiered by Earplay Ensemble in the ODC Theater in May 2017.