For violin, cello and percussion, includes score. Thought: "When the mouth ceases to speak and the heart is roaring, it's time to listen to the heart." Strung concerns extremes. The differences between loud and soft, fast and slow, strict and indeterminate, and so on. The percussion requires vibes, six tom-toms, snare drum, three cymbals, wood, metal and glass wind chimes, wood block, crotales, plus a rack of six metal and wood sounds. Duration: ca. 18'
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Review from Percussive Notes (2021):
Strung
Erik Lund
Integrating text within contemporary music can be hit or miss, but I find Erik Lund’s use of pseudo-English within the context of an overly expressive, improvised string and percussion semi-serial fanfare to be fascinating. Premiered in 1987 in Urbana, Illinois, “Strung” is a musical drama performed by three theatrical musicians. Each player is frequently given spoken text and delivery directions throughout the surrounding musicalnotation to combine virtuosic musicality andguided improvisation with a nebulous narrativeintended to perplex and intrigue the audience.
Although all parts exhibit extended techniques and guided improvisation, the percussion part contains the brunt of timbral variance throughout, using a plethora of instrument families. Although the vibraphone is the main melodic instrument for the percussion, Lund includes motivic lines for the toms as well as cymbals and a timbre-rack percussion setup—defined and refined by Michael Udow—to help increase range and direction. For clarification, the percussionist only needs three crotales from the higher octave (E, F-sharp, and G). Additionally, the written vibraphone parts along with the multiple percussion aspects of the piece are very challenging and will require a mature performer for successful execution.
Included in this publication is an insert page for each instrument during one of the most active parts of the piece where reading from a score is unrealistic. This is helpful for each instrumentalist, but is missing many accents and articulations, requiring some additional work for the performer to copy over details. Although the publisher provides a sample page and a brief introductory audio snippet of the piece, additional score material and significantly longer audio samples can be found on the composer’s website.
At around 18 minutes in length, “Strung” is worth checking out, especially if you want to add a flare of the dramatic to your graduate recital.
—Matthew Geiger
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