The Scampering Scarecrow Cello Book
by Garth Williams
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2013
- Publisher
- Kantata Studios, Duncan, B.C. (composer's own imprint); distributed by the Canadian Music Centre (RSN 76281, call no. MI 3213 W7235sca; score 37 pp., part 11 pp.) and as a digital download from Sheet Music Direct / Sheet Music Plus
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About this piece
Garth Williams, a British Columbia string teacher who founded the Cowichan Camerata String Orchestra and has started string programmes in three school districts, wrote this book of ten short pieces with piano for his own young students. It begins with a Berceuse and moves through pieces about a scarecrow, Halloween ghosts, a mischievous mop, a little train car, two Easter rabbits and a rhino and a chimp, ending with Floating Snowflakes, which weaves in The First Nowell. Williams says he wrote it to introduce right- and left-hand pizzicato, col legno, glissandi, first double stops, staccato and legato bowing and, for many students, their first minor scales. Each piece is followed by the scale of its key and rhythm patterns taken from the music, so a student can learn the rhythms before starting the piece.
Technical overview
Mostly first position in bass clef, in D major, G major, C major, A minor and G minor, with a few later pieces climbing to D and E on the A string. The cellist alternates pizzicato and arco within phrases, plays col legno, a short glissando, staccato eighth notes, two-note slurs and some sixteenth-note figures, and handles a few meter changes between 4/4 and 3/4 over a simple piano part.
Technical focus
- 2 Note Slurs
- Accidentals
- Col Legno
- Collaboration with Piano
- Glissando
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Meter Changes
- Pizzicato
- Shifting
- Staccato