Primavera: Heterophony for 24 'Celli (©1977, 2008) [12:47] 

 

Primavera – Heterophony for 24 ‘Celli was composed between July and December of 1977 for the Oberlin Cello Choir, at the request of Professor Richard Kapuscuzinski, Director.  With this piece, I have tried to compose a music which is constantly changing its focus, from (for example) being melodically conceived, to timbrally conceived, to texturally conceived, to spatially conceived, to structurally conceived, to rhythmically conceived, etc.  The pitch materials are generally derived from the cell:  c – e flat – b and its permutations.  The sounds are distributed spatially over a large performance area in precisely controlled configurations which are changed and developed over the course of the piece.  The spatial patterns of sound movement are realized in a two dimensional space, with front/rear perceptions being equally important as right/left perceptions.  The massed timbres uniquely obtainable with many instruments of the same type are a prominent feature of the piece and have grown out of my involvement with electronic and computer music.  The individual techniques called for in the parts include: conventionally bowed and plucked sounds, harmonics (natural and artificial), harmonic glissandi (natural, artificial and artificial broken), sul ponticello, col legno (with the wooden stick of the bow – both struck and stroked), snap pizzicato (rebound from the fingerboard) pizzicato tremolo, and crushed tone (overpressure).  

The work is conceived in five sections:

Primavera – Heterophony for 24 ‘Celli was recorded at the Oberlin Conservatory in 1977 by Tim Bethel and reprocessed by Jeremy Tressler for Furious Artisans Records.