Stoft (Dust)
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2017
- Duration
- 5'
- Publisher
- Svensk Musik (Swedish Music Information Centre archive; PDF score sold from the work page)
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About this piece
Maria Lithell Flyg (1965–2026), who took her master's in composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 2014, wrote Stoft (Dust) in 2017, and it was first heard at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Alabama on 5 February that year [1][2][3]. The cello drifts between sul ponticello and ordinary bowing on long held notes, the metre shifting from 12/8 through 7/8, 5/8 and 9/8, while the pianist reaches inside the instrument to pluck the strings [4]. A "Molto espressivo" passage of fortissimo chords breaks in around the middle, and the closing section, marked "Dreamy", fades "morendo" [4]. Astrid Lindell and Martin Sturfält recorded it for the 2019 album Collected Chamber Music [5][6].
Technical overview
Eighth note = 150, later 96, with changes among 12/8, 8/8, 7/8, 5/8, 9/8 and 10/8. Bass and treble clef, with high notes well above the bass staff, long held tones that move between sul ponticello and ordinario, and touched harmonics on the G and C strings. The middle section has fortissimo three-note chords with grace notes from the low C and marked down- and up-bows, and pizzicato runs in triplets and sixteenths appear throughout. Tempo is slow, so the difficulty lies in tone control, pitch placement on the high entries and counting against a sparse piano part.
Technical focus
- Chords
- Collaboration with Piano
- Dynamics
- Extended Techniques
- False Harmonics
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Harmonics
- Meter Changes
- Pizzicato
- Shifting
- Sul Ponticello
- Triplets