SKU: BT.MUSM570367320

English.

Sadie Harrison's Ha llristningsomra det  for solo Double Bass. Composed and published 2016. Duration c. 10 minutes The area of Tanumshede is situated on the south western coast of Sweden. Archaeologically, it is renowned for its unique series of Bronze Age rock carvings dating from between c. 1800 to 500 BCE. Incised into over 600 panels, the petroglyphs were originally situated along a 25 mile stretch of fjord coastline and as such there are many depictions of Hjortspring boats and seafaring activities. There are also scenes of hunting, agricultural and livestock farming and warring, with many armoured figures carrying swords, axes and shields. Whilst it is possible tointerpret most carvings as images of quotidian life, the meaning of some panels is less clear. It is likely that several scenes depict ritual acts overseen by gods, often surrounded by abstract symbols - crosses, dots and ‘cups’, the significance of which is now unknown. As well as being a source of information about Scandinavian Bronze Age weapons, vehicles, tools, ships, even hairstyles, the carvings have also been the subject of debates about gender. The society depicted on the rocks seems overwhelmingly patriarchal, making the rare carvings of probable female figures particularly important. The most famous of these is known as The Grieving Woman, apparently weeping over a dead warrior from a ship. Her grief, ‘heavy as rocks’ is heard in the opening movement of the piece, echoing through the remaining movements and giving the work its dark, melancholy character. The Woman returns in the final movement as a ghost, her footsteps coming closer and closer as her ‘lover’s’ ship is rebuilt over and over again. Movement III is gentler in tone, a song for the Woman and her lover - depicted as a couple rolling a giant sun surrounded by farm animals. Movement II represents the enigmatic Juggler or Calendar Man who holds 29 spheres in his hand - perhaps juggling the fate of The Grieving Woman.

SKU: BT.YE0030

An easy virtuoso work published here for the first time and now much performed. Recorded Slatford/Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields (EMI). AMEB (Australian Syllabus) 2004. Orchestral material on hire from Yorke Edition (notSpartan).

Programme Note:

As a young professional player in the 1960s, my work as a double bassist with chamber ensembles and small orchestras took me all over the world. This presented an unparalleledopportunity to scour libraries and archives wherever I went. Long before the advent of the photocopier and e-mail, research was far more challenging than it is today. Eastern Europe was particularly difficult to access, withmanycollections kept under lock and key for all but a few hours a week. One quickly found colleagues who were keen to share information gleaned in passing, even though they had no specific interest in one's own particularspecialism (it is so often the peripheral topics that fascinate as much as the main subject under investigation, and one can quickly be side-tracked into political and social issues that have only slender bearing on the job inhand!).

In the early 1970s James Brown, the then sub-principal oboist of the English Chamber Orchestra with whom I was working at the time, stumbled across a small collection of double bass manuscripts at the RoyalDanish State Library in Copenhagen. They were by Franz Anton Leopold Keÿper (b. c.1756, d. Copenhagen 7 June 1815), a double bassist of Dutch origin who worked as principal of the Royal Chapel Orchestra in Copenhagen.Keÿper's son was the bassoonist Franz Jacob August Keÿper (1792-1859). The collection included a number of concertos, some chamber music, and various naïve fragments. Although hardly the work of a Mozart or Haydn,the style is characteristic of the period. For an instrument such as the double bass, whose 18th century solo repertoire is largely written for tunings that are no longer in everyday use, Keÿper's music is easily approachablein its.