- Missy Mazzoli
Dark with Excessive Bright (Concerto for Contrabass and String Orchestra) (2018)
- G Schirmer Inc (World)
Commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Aurora
- db + str (min 4.4.3.3.1; max 12.10.8.6.4)
- Double Bass
- 13 min
- 16th November 2024, Barnes Hall, Ithaca, NY, United States of America
- 14th February 2025, The Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark
Programme Note
Composer note
While composing Dark with Excessive Bright for contrabass soloist Maxime Bibeau and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, I continuously listened to music from the Baroque and Renaissance eras. I was inspired in no small part by Maxime's double bass, a massive instrument built in 1580 that was stored in an Italian monastery for hundreds of years and even patched with pages from the Good Friday liturgy. I imagined this instrument as a historian, an object that collected the music of the passing centuries in the twists of its neck and the fibers of its wood, finally emerging into the light at age 400 and singing it all into the world. While loosely based in Baroque idioms, this piece slips between string techniques from several centuries, all while twisting a pattern of repeated chords beyond recognition. "Dark with excessive bright," a phrase from Milton's Paradise Lost, is a surreal and evocative description of God, written by a blind man. I love the impossibility of this phrase, and felt it was a strangely accurate way to describe the dark but heartrending sound of the double bass itself. Dark with Excessive Bright was commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Aurora Orchestra in London.
— Missy Mazzoli
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More Info
- Missy Mazzoli premieres and concerts from August to March
- 27th August 2024
- In the upcoming season, several of Missy Mazzoli’s works will be performed in the German-speaking countries and receive country premieres.
- World Premiere Mazzoli Recordings Now Available from BIS
- 28th February 2023
- BIS Records releases 'Dark with Excessive Bright' on March 3, 2023, featuring several world premiere recordings by composer Missy Mazzoli.