Violin and Cello
SKU:
BT.MUSM570360130
Composed by Thomas
Simaku. Score Only. 9
pages. University of York
Music Press
#MUSM570360130. Published
by University of York
Music Press
(BT.MUSM570360130).
English.
For
Violin and Cello.
Published 2008. Dedicated
to Peter Sheppard
Skaerved and Neil Heyde.
This music was composed
during my DAAD residency
in Berlin in October —
November 2007. If I were
to describe it in one
sentence, I would say
that it is based on the
idea of 'two things
seen/heard as one'. a2 (a
due) is a well-known term
to musicians; it is often
found in orchestral
scores indicating a given
passage that is to be
played by two instruments
of the same family.
Although violin and cello
could well be regarded as
'first cousins' of the
string family, the
literal implementation of
the term a2 as a
'compositional strategy'
would have been too much
(!) for a piece of
chamber music consisting
of no more than two
players. Not
surprisingly, this never
happens in this work; in
fact, the opposite is
true: regardless of how
it appears on paper (i.e.
on one or two staves),
the music for each
instrument is constantly
based on two layers. This
musical 'interpretation'
of the title gives an
indication as to how the
textural format of the
piece operates. However,
this was by no means the
only thought that
'preoccupied' my mind
whilst composing this
music. Berlin made a
profound impression on
me. The remnants of the
wall in Bernauer
Straße and the cobbled
two-stone line tracing
the wall across where it
once stood — a clear
reminder of what not so
long ago there were two
different worlds in one
city — provoked a
strikingly dramatic
effect. Border,
death-strip, killing, and
escape to freedom had a
particularly evocative
resonance, especially of
the time when I lived for
three years in a remote
town in Southern Albania
right at the border with
Greece. There, there was
a nameless road whose
destination the
authorities did not want
you to know, but the
locals called it the
'death-road'. In no way
programmatic, in this
context, the
extra-musical dimension
of the principal idea is
very much part of the
piece. Here, the musical
and extra-musical
interpretations cannot
easily be separated, for
they are two parts of the
same thing: a2. As if to
add another dimension to
this idea, there are two
versions of this piece:
for viola & cello and
violin & cello. The
first version was
premiéred by Garth Knox
and Rohan de Saram at the
2008 Intrasonus Festival
in Venice..
