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- Piers Hellawell
A Frieze and a Litany
- Peters Edition Limited (World)
This pair of pieces for solo cello was requested by Scottish cellist Robert Irvine in 2015 for his Songs and Lullabies project, collection of 19 solo pieces especially written for a CD of that name (on Delphian DCD34173), to raise funds for UNICEF. It was premiered by him in Sounds Festival, Aberdeen, Scotland the following year. The work is also recorded by Paul Watkins, on the compilation disc NEW MUSIC: NEW IRELAND FOUR. The pieces take their title, and their contrasted behaviour, from a phrase in the poem ‘A Man in Assynt’ by Norman McCaig. The first piece is static, focused upon one chord progression; the second piece is a long melodic line, that twice descends to the low register; together they offer a frieze, and a litany.
Programme Note
This work for solo cello was requested by Scottish cellist Robert Irvine in 2015 for his Songs and Lullabies project, in which he recorded a collection of 19 solo pieces, especially written for a CD of that name (on Delphian DCD34173), to raise funds for UNICEF’s work protecting children around the world. It was premiered by him in Sounds Festival, Aberdeen, Scotland the following year. It is also recorded by Paul Watkins, on the compilation disc NEW MUSIC: NEW IRELAND FOUR.
The title comes from the poem ‘Man in Assynt’ by Scottish poet Norman McCaig, his reflection on the intrusion of man into the primeval and undoctored landscape of North-west Scotland. There are in fact two pieces, highly contrasted: the first takes a chord idea and descends, clutching it, into the cello’s low reaches; the second unfolds a melodic line, also descending to the murky region of percussive noises – but it does it twice, so that its second part is a variation on the first.
While many avant-garde cello pieces have tended to explore the diversity of things that this most versatile of instruments can do in a fixed period, this work concentrates upon the two best established of these – chord and line.
A version of the piece for viola was made in 2019 at the suggestion of Swiss violist Lucia Kobza, to whom the version is dedicated; it was premiered online in 2021 by Scott Dickinson, who also provided invaluable help with the editing of the viola score.
Piers Hellawell 2016, 2021