Instrumentation:
2 vc
Approximate duration:
12 minutes
Programme notes (© David Curington, 2011):
The main focal points of this work, at least as intended during its composition, are
structural and rhythmic. I was fascinated by linear evolution as a musical "journey" and
by contrasting structural approaches akin to viewing the same object from different angles
and sought a way of combining these two ideas. My solution has an equally visual stimulus:
when one embarks on a journey from place A to place B, one in fact arrives at place B once
it is aged. I then imagined a parallel journey from a young place B to place A once aged.
These two journeys represent the first two movements and for structural closure, the third
and fourth movements are comparisons of "young A" and "young B" and then "old A"
and "old B" respectively.
A rhythmic technique is employed throughout which is intended to capture the spirit of
classical rhythm as a hierarchy of beats within each bar - this is in contrast to traditional
African-based rhythms where, as Phillip Glass has remarked, "all the beats are the same".
Also on a local level, timbre is frequently "panned" between the two cellists so that whilst
one changes bowing to sul tasto, the other changes to sul ponticello. Use is also made of
three-part harmony with the top voice generated by the lowest common partial of the
lower two (i.e. the "carrier" in frequency analysis and the same way artificial harmonics
work on any string instrument).
Two Journeys and Two Comparisons was completed in October 2010 for David McCann
and Tom Bayman, who gave its first performance at the Park Lane Group Young
Composers' Symposium at the Southbank Centre in December.
Sample music:
Click here for a few
pages of the score as a pdf file, or listen to an excerpt below.