The Goddess of Ballachulish
by Sonia Allori
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Vocal
- Composed
- 2024
- Duration
- 7'
- Publisher
- Sonia Allori (by request)
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About this piece
A seven-minute piece for soprano and cello by Sonia Allori, a Scotland-based composer who writes about composing as a deaf and disabled artist. It imagines the reawakening of the Ballachulish Goddess, a 2,500-year-old wooden figure of a woman dug from the peat beside Loch Leven in the 1880s and now in the National Museum of Scotland. Allori says the goddess wakes tired and lethargic, 'much given to sighing', and the music opens heavy and dragging and grows lighter with each verse, a lament tinged with hope; the score includes theatrical performance notes. It was written for soprano Stephanie Lamprea and cellist Jessica Kerr for Illuminate Scotland's 2024/25 series, and they performed it at the sound festival in Portsoy in October 2025. No score or recording is published; contact the composer.
Technical overview
No technical overview is available yet.