Purchase or download
About this piece
A three-minute lyrical piece for solo cello, commissioned by cellist Robert Irvine, who premiered it at the Loch Shiel Festival on 16 April 2016 and recorded it on his Delphian album Songs and Lullabies. It is built as one long sustained melody, mostly in the cello's upper register, broken up by occasional pizzicato notes, and the composer's note says it ends with sombre low-register sounds. The opening is marked 'sighing', and the dynamics swing between ppp and ff.
Technical overview
The cellist sustains a slow, chromatic melody written mainly in tenor clef, holding notes up to C5 on the A string in thumb position while the meter changes almost every bar. Short pizzicato passages, including a rolled three-note chord, interrupt the bowed line.
Technical focus
- Thumb Position
- Shifting
- Vibrato
- Pizzicato
- Meter Changes
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Legato
- Accidentals