Thomas Simaku: a2 (a): Viola & Cello: Score
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Format : Sheet music For Viola and Cello.Published 2008.Dedicated to Garth Knox and Rohan de SaramFirst performance: Intrasonus Festival Venice 3 May 2008'This music was composed during my DAAD residency in Berlinin 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 orchestralscores 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 itappears 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 Straà e and the cobbled two-stone line tracingthe 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 aparticularly 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 notwant 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
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