Underground Streams
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1991
- Publisher
- Canadian Music Centre (unpublished, printed by CMC), RSN 55667, call no. MI 3213 M928und 1991; handwritten score 19 pp. and part 4 pp.
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About this piece
Rosemary Mountain wrote Underground Streams for cello and piano in 1991. The cello begins low and 'murmuring', with an optional mute, while short rolled piano chords push and pull through written accelerandos and ritardandos. A later section has the cello play pizzicato notes marked 'dripping', with glissandi, as the pianist silently holds down keys so that the strings ring in sympathy, and there are long stretches in which the cello plays alone in free, recitative-like lines. It ends with low pizzicato notes over a long-held piano chord.
Technical overview
Mostly in bass and tenor clef, with grace-note figures, trills, glissandi, harmonics and pizzicato, and meter changes from 2/16 to 5/2. The tempo is elastic throughout, with accelerandos, ritardandos and fermatas that the cellist has to shape together with the pianist.