Chamber Music Flute,
Piano, Viola
SKU:
PR.11440719S
Composed
by Nathan Currier. Set of
Score and Parts. With
Standard notation. 44
pages. Duration 11
minutes, 30 seconds.
Theodore Presser Company
#114-40719S. Published by
Theodore Presser Company
(PR.11440719S).
UPC:
680160011087. 8.5 x 11
inches.
Sambuca,
which most people know
today as a
licorice-flavored
liqueur, was the name the
Greeks gave to a kind of
sharp, shrill-sounding
harp, of Eastern,
possibly Jewish origin.
The Greeks then gave this
same name to a wooden
flute made from the elder
bush, and in the middle
ages it was also
associated with the viol,
at least to the extent
that the Hurdy-gurdy, an
instrument shaped like a
viol and played by means
of a rotating wheel, was
sometimes called a
Sambuca rotata. Thus, the
word Sambuca is tied up
with the ancestors - in
each case, ancestors of
ow birth, as it were - of
the modern harp, flute,
and viola. Somehow, the
present-day association
with alcohol seems very
meet, in that a certain
objectionable quality
seems to have gone with
the name - in 1545 one
George Ascham wrote, This
I am sure... all maner of
pypes, barbitons,
sambukes... be condemned
of Aristotle. The word
Sambucistria - for a
female Sambuca player -
was used by Plutarch and
others to evoke a feeling
of foreign-inspired
decadence [Grove's
Dictionary of Musical
Instruments, 1984].
Currier's work is truly a
Sambuca sonata. Written
for the three Sambuca
instruments, Currier has
first of all seemingly
endeavoured to make the
harp part particularly
Sambuca-like (i.e., sharp
and shrill) with its many
nail and xylophonic
effects, but more
importantly, has used
musical material that
corresponds to the
low-brow, somewhat
Dionysian, indeed, today
even Bacchanalian
implication of the name -
thus, rock music seems to
inspire a great deal
Currier's work [the
Samba, an appropriately
Bacchanalian Brazilian
Carnival dance, in duple
meter with syncopations,
while apparently having
no etymological
connection to Sambuca,
might seem to be
musically involved, too].
The Sambuca which lies
behind this rather
drunken piece is probably
the only musical
instrument which became a
model for an instrument
of war; one Craxton wrote
in 1489 that Sambuce is
an engyn whiche is made
in manere of a harpe able
to perce a walle. But
whether talking of the
modern liqueur or the
ancient instrument
condemned of Aristotle
and mentioned four times
in the Book of Daniel, it
is a shame that Debussy -
inspired by the Dionysian
side of classical culture
(as in Prelude a
l'apres-midi d'un faune)
- seems to have remained
ignorant Sambuca, a word
which to some extent must
lie behind all works for
this wonderful
instrumentation which he
invented, and which I
might seem to have
striven unconsciously,
equally ignorant, to make
the sole basis of
Currier's work - until,
having completed this
piece, written for
harpist Marie-Pierre
Langlamet, and rummaging
around for a title, I
chanced upon it in an old
dictionary.
