Abrasion
by Mary Bellamy
- Instrumentation
- Cello
- Composed
- 2011
- Duration
- 19'
- Publisher
- Composers Edition (ce-mb3a1)
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About this piece
A 19-minute piece for amplified solo cello, commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and premiered there by Séverine Ballon in 2011; it was the second of Bellamy's collaborations with Ballon, after Transference. In the composer's note most of the sounds are 'focused on noise rather than pitch': the bow scraped across or diagonally along damped strings, a fingernail rubbed along a string, taps and slaps on muted strings, and a bowless passage written on three staves for the two hands. These are set against sustained textures built from harmonics on two strings detuned by microtones. Amplification is part of the scoring.
Technical overview
No technical overview is available yet.