Rook + Cello

About this piece

Rook + Cello is one of seven short pieces in Andrew Hugill's Spectrum Sounds, commissioned in 2021 by The Space as part of the BBC's Culture in Quarantine programme, with Arts Council England, Unlimited and the Attenborough Arts Centre. Hugill wrote it for Elisabeth Wiklander, a cellist in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who made the recording. In the programme note printed in the score, Hugill writes that he "cannot visit a rookery without hearing the sound of a cello", and that the minor sixth, the note E and the Phrygian mode are all purple to his ears. He names Erik Satie's Rose+Croix music as an influence: the title copies Satie's formula, and the form follows Satie's 'durational constructions'. The piece is a slow, quiet melody (crotchet = c. 52) in changing metres that rises from the low C string into tenor clef and ends very softly. It can be played with or without recordings of rooks from the BBC Sound Effects Library. Hugill gives the score away as a free PDF on his Spectrum Sounds website, and Wiklander's recording is on Bandcamp and YouTube.

Technical overview

A single slow movement of about 3½ minutes, mostly pp to mp, with long slurred phrases. Bass and tenor clef, metres that change almost every bar (5/4, 3/4, 6/4, 7/4, 9/4, 4/4), triplets, quintuplets and sextuplets, natural harmonics, wide leaps down to low E on the C string, and a closing double stop.

Technical focus

• Legato
• Shifting
• String Crossings
• Harmonics
• Dynamics
• Hairpin Dynamics
• Rhythm
• Dotted Rhythms
• C String Notes
• A String Notes