DAVID LANG
CHILD
FOR CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
FULL SCORE
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instrumentation
flute/piccolo (plus simple percussion - see note below)
clarinet in Bb / bass clarinet in Bb (plus simple percussion)
piano (plus simple percussion)
percussion
violin (plus simple percussion)
viola (plus simple percussion)
cello
my very empty mouth (1999) is scored for flute, bass clarinet, piano, violin, viola and cello, and was written for Ensemble Alternance (Paris)
sweet air (1999) is scored for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello, and was written for Sentieri Selvaggi (Milan)
short fall (2000) is scored for piccolo, piano, violin, and cello, and was written for the Pearls Before Swine Experience (Stockholm)
stick figure (2001) is scored for clarinet, piano, percussion, cello and two or more non-percussionists, and was written for Sentieri Selvaggi (Milan)
little eye (1999) is scored for cello and four or more non-percussionists, and was written for Alter Ego (Rome)
the individual movements may be played separately, or in smaller groupings.
the score is written in C, the piccolo sounds one octave higher than written
the duration is approximately 42 minutes
note on amplification
I would like to encourage performers to amplify this work - to magnify the players when are playing quiety, to balance the instruments, and to make more apparent the spatial qualities of the piece. Distortion and reverb are also encouraged, as a way of heightening the perception that there is a great feeling of distance between the listener and the music.
note on non-percussionists
It was my intention with stick figure and little eye to compose pieces in which extra non-percussion parts could be played by musicians who were not necessarily percussionists, thus making the pieces playable by different kinds of chamber ensembles, or, in the case of little eye, a string quartet with a friend.
There are more players in child than are needed to play all the nonpercussion parts of stick figure and little eye . It is possible for the extra players to rest or to participate as desired. In stick figure it is no problemthe piece may be played with 1 or more non-percussionists, each playing the same part. In little eye it is a bit more complicated. little eye has 4 specific and different parts - because it is for cello and 4 nonpercussionists, little eye, played as part of child, will leave 2 extra players. These players may rest, or may scrape extra brake drums, beginning with the first note of percussion 4 and continuing to the end.
In stick figure the low tom part must be played by the other members the ensemble. These low toms are extensions of the real percussion part and should be arranged spatially, placed away from the real percussionist and separated from each other.
Some decisions on the percussion instruments in little eye are left up to the performers. The instruments should all be bell-like, capable of ringing, or sustaining. The instruments should be different from each other. In addition to the percussion instruments, each percussionist has a brake drum, which is scraped slowly and continuously with a metal scraper, beginning with each musician's first entrance and lasting to the end of the piece. Ideally, the percussionists should be placed around the audience, or arranged spatially, in order to give each part its own little world. The choices for the premiere were as follows:
percussion 1: glockenspiel, (plus brake drum)
percussion 2: piano, (plus brake drum)
percussion 3: glockenspiel, (plus brake drum)
percussion 4: vibraphone, (plus brake drum)
Because the percussion instruments used in little eye will change for each different performing ensemble the octaves of the percussion parts designated in the score may not be the actual octaves heard.
david lang child
In the space of one month in 1999, by some strange coincidence, I received five commissions for almost the same instrumentation. The prospect of writing five practically identical pieces in a row seemed uninviting to me, so I came up with the idea of organizing these pieces around common themes, shared materials, and unorthodox doublings, such as having a flutist or violist play percussion. I was then able to link these pieces, as movements in a larger work. The larger work is called CHILD.
CHILD is my attempt to examine certain experiences as I remember (and misremember) them from my childhood. Each of the individual movements is in some way a memory of how I learned how to do something. Because I was taught (as most children are) that one learns how to perceive the world by making up rules it has been possible to apply these rules to musical environments.
I am not nostalgic for childhood, mine or anyone else's. It is not a point of CHILD to show either how childhood is a time of great excitement or great disturbance, or that I miss it or that I suffered through it. What is most interesting to me, especially now that I have children of my own, is that childhood is the time when one learns how to think, how to feel, how to move forward. Because each piece of music in some way needs to teach its listener its own rules for how it works, it is a comparison I have found meaningful.
The individual movements, and their meanings, are as follows:
my very empty mouth
The phrase my very empty mouth is part of a sentence I was taught to help remember the order of the planets: mercury, venus, earth, mars, etc. Now I no longer remember the whole sentence, and the rest of the solar system has been lost.
my very empty mouth was written for Ensemble Alternance.
sweet air
During a trip to the dentist my oldest son Isaac was given laughing gas. The dentist called it "sweet air", a gentle name to take the fear out of having a cavity filled. It worked. My son experienced something - a drug - so comforting that it made him ignore all signs of unpleasantness. This seemed somehow musical to me. One of music's traditional roles has always been to soothe the uneasy. I must say I have never been that interested in exploring this role. It is much easier to comfort the listener than to show why the listener might need to be comforted. My piece sweet air tries to show a little bit of both. In sweet air, simple, gentle musical fragments float by, leaving a faint haze of dissonance in their wake.
sweet air was written for the ensemble Sentieri Selvaggi for premiere at the Settembre Musica Festival in Torino, Italy, 9 September 1999. It is intended as a birthday present for Louis Andriessen - Happy sixtieth birthday, Louis!
short fall
I wanted to write a piece in which a large amount of effort was expended to go a very small distance. short fall is that piece. Underneath all the activity in short fall the actual notes fall only very slightly. It is as if the surface is so active that the subtle effects of gravity pass (almost) unnoticed.
short fall was written for the pearls before swine experience it is dedicated to Lynn Garon
stick figure
A child learns to draw by drawing lines. In the hands of a child a person is a stick figure, a skeletal intersection of stark lines, stripped of flesh, without subtle details. Only later does a child learn to add things - some hair, a dress, some shoes. Watching my children go through this stage has made me realize that my music is moving in the opposite direction. With every piece a little bit of flesh is removed, a little more skeleton is uncovered.
stick figure was written for the ensemble Sentieri Selvaggi for premiere at the Teatro alla Scala in Milano, Italy, 12 March 2001.
little eye
Small children get bored easily when traveling long distances by car. One way to distract them is to play the game "I spy with my little eye," in which you look out the window and describe something you have noticed. In my experience this does work, but in a very subdued way - it is not the most exciting way to pass the time. Eventually, however, time does pass.
little eye was commissioned by the Italian music festival Nuova Consonanza for the ensemble Alter Ego, and was premiered at the Opera Paese in Rome, Italy, 16 October 1999.