2 Rückenfiguren [2021]

for male voice

duration :: 4’

Written for Carl Rosman

Recording :: Carl Rosman :: HCR [ forthcoming ]

The present pair of small vocal solos takes its cue from my 2016 tuba solo Rückenfigur, and extends the premises and conditions of that piece into what I hope to be an ongoing series for various solo performers (and perhaps small ensembles…): a growing collection of spare, intensely quiet and intensely private miniatures written quickly and more or less intuitively, mostly free of my usual rhythmic and notational intricacies—a series of direct utterances, seemingly unmediated, as a thread among a catalogue of more "substantial", more intricately theorized things.

The tuba solo incorporates a fragment of text from the Wycliffe translation of the Book of Lamentations: "Thou seidist, Drede thou not." That text also forms the basis of the second of these small pieces; the first is an earlier fragment from the same text: "Watris flowiden ouer myn heed."

 These pieces were originally written to serve as interludes in a recording by Carl Rosman of my (then-)complete works for solo clarinet and for solo voice, which is forthcoming in 2023.