Circling (Kreisen)

About this piece

Circling is a four-movement work for cello and piano from 1982, lasting about nine and a half minutes. Each movement is headed by a drawn circle figure, and the composer's preface explains that the circles stand for the relationship between the two players: the first movement is deliberately unsynchronized to suggest aloofness and isolation, the second is a 'pas de deux', the third a playful game of 'target', and the finale's interlocking quasi-modal writing suggests resolution and union. The idiom is freely atonal, and the piano part has an optional pair of finger cymbals laid on the strings. The score is published by P.J. Tonger (Cologne, 2003) and is also sold by the American Composers Alliance.

Technical overview

The cellist plays unsynchronized, proportionally timed passages of rolled pizzicato and bowed chords with jeté, then con sordino lines with natural harmonics reaching into tenor and treble clef, and a quick, accented third movement of snapped dotted figures in changing meters (4/4, 3/4, 5/4).

Technical focus

• Pizzicato
• Double Stops
• Harmonics
• Dotted Rhythms
• Meter Changes
• Accidentals
• Hairpin Dynamics
• Collaboration with Piano