Excursión a la Montaña
- Instrumentation
- Cello
- Composed
- 1994
- Publisher
- Self-published by the composer; free score (cello solo version) on joseelizondo.com
Purchase or download
About this piece
José Elizondo, who studied music and electrical engineering at MIT, wrote Excursión a la Montaña in 1994 for a friend, the flutist Kim Sopata, and it has since been taken up by the flutists Orlando Cela and Sefika Kutluer. Elizondo describes it as the story of a child's first trip to the top of a little mountain, with impressionist harmonies drawn from Debussy and Prokofiev alongside touches of Mexican music and flamenco. In the version for unaccompanied cello the music sets off 'very light, easy flowing, playful' in 12/8, turns 'flirting, playful (with flamenco flavor)' in the tenor clef, and pauses for two unmeasured recitatives in which harmonic glissandos imitate birdsong and a seagull before the opening returns and the piece ends on a plucked D. Elizondo shares the cello part free on joseelizondo.com, and the cellist Serhii Petrov recorded it for the composer's YouTube channel.
Technical overview
D major in 12/8 with bars of 6/8, Andantino (dotted quarter = 102) framing a slower capriccioso middle section. The line is full of chromatic slides and portato eighths, climbs into the tenor clef for the flamenco-flavoured passages, and uses grace notes, trills and a glissando to a high harmonic. Two senza misura recitatives call for harmonic glissandos in thumb position as a sound effect, and the last note is pizzicato.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Dynamics
- False Harmonics
- Glissando
- Grace Notes
- Harmonics
- Meter Changes
- Pizzicato
- Portato
- Shifting
- Tenor Clef
- Trills