Foxy Fox's Musical Games
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2018
- Duration
- 8'
- Publisher
- Canadian Music Centre (unpublished, printed by CMC), RSN 76647, call no. MI 3213 B798fo; copyright Black Ice Sound 2018. Also arranged by the composer for violin and piano and for viola and piano.
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About this piece
For the 2018 Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, Carmen Braden wrote Foxy Fox's Musical Games, and the competition's finalists premiered it in Brandon, Manitoba, that May. It runs as eight short 'games' played without a break: the cellist asks the audience for numbers that decide how many times a note repeats, sings and plays a new children's song about a fox who 'waits and he pounces', trades control of dynamics and tempo with the pianist in games of tag, and improvises on a lullaby or song remembered from childhood. Braden writes that she wanted to blur the line between composer and performer and give each player moments to make musical choices, with the two chasing each other 'like a couple of young fox pups'.
Technical overview
The written cello part sits mostly in bass clef in the lower positions, with short treble-clef passages up to the C an octave above middle C. It has slurred triplet and sixteenth-note runs at quarter note = 88 to 100, glissandi including a slide to the highest note possible on the G string, meter changes among 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4, and a sul tasto ending. The harder parts are singing while playing, the unmeasured senza misura sections, and improvising a remembered song centred on C, then on A, against a steady piano part.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Collaboration with Piano
- Dynamics
- Extended Techniques
- Glissando
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Meter Changes
- Rubato
- Sul Tasto
- Tempo Changes
- Treble Clef
- Triplets