Hope Beyond the Struggles
by Maya Badian
- Instrumentation
- Cello Ensemble
- Composed
- 2015
- Duration
- 15'
- Publisher
- Lucian Badian Editions, LB 110 (ISMN 979-0-53001-633-6, 2015); distributed by the Canadian Music Centre, RSN 69914, call no. MI 3135 B136hop
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About this piece
Maya Badian wrote this cello quartet in 2015 for the Boston Cello Quartet, the group formed in 2010 by Boston Symphony cellists Blaise Déjardin, Adam Esbensen, Mihail Jojatu and Alexandre Lecarme. Its motto comes from her son Mircea, a percussionist who died before he turned 22, who said at the age of five that life is 'a little bit of Light between two entities of Darkness'. Eight linked sections trace that arch, from a Lament passed between the four cellos through Childhood Memories, an Elegy and a long crescendo over driving eighth notes called Life: A Journey of Hope, to Towards Nirvana, where each player slides away on a chromatic glissando. Two sections let the players choose pitches within marked ranges, and in the closing Let's Celebrate Life! the four cellists tap their feet and chant 'Life is short, and art is long' in accelerando.
Technical overview
Cello 1 reads treble and tenor clef and carries the highest lines; the other parts move between tenor and bass clef. The writing includes measured tremolo, glissandi, trills, long ostinato passages in accented eighth notes, Bartók pizzicato, col legno battuto, aleatoric pitch choices within given ranges, changing meters and rubato, and every player needs a triangle and must speak and tap their feet in the finale.