Letter to Balhannah
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Violin
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See this piece performed by Sarah Curro (who commissioned it) at one of her VOLUME shows in 2010. |
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Having some fun with musical multitasking...
Program note:
A perennial problem in this day and age is everyone’s apparent lack of time. As I sat down to write this violin piece for Sarah Curro, I also wanted to write a letter to my friend Hannah from Balhannah who I hadn’t seen for a long time. I didn’t want to wait any longer to do either of these two things, so I decided to try to combine them both in a sort of “musical letter”. I got out a piece of manuscript paper, wrote “Piece for Sarah Curro” up the top, and then began, “Dear Hannah…”
Weeks later, I had several pages of fragmentary sentences interspersed with musical sketches – not really fit to send either Hannah or Sarah. However, I eventually wrote a “proper” letter to Hannah, and then took my musical sketches and made them into a stand-alone violin piece for Sarah. Seeing as this took several months, I’m unlikely to try it again! The musical result is both a portrait of Hannah (look out for palindromes!) and an expression of friendship. It’s also something I hope Sarah will have a lot of fun playing. Sarah and Hannah don’t know each other, but they both play violin and they both lead incredibly busy and full lives, and this is reflected in the music – there’s scarcely a moment to stop and think! Yet there’s plenty of love and joy… © David John Lang 2009 |
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