lark lament
(2025)

Composer's notes:
In March 2025, I made some recordings of woodlarks displaying, near Greifswald in Meck-Pomm. Their song was very variable, but many of the strophes contained some kind of tumbling, cascading figure, meaning that the end effect of their musical performances was always one of going 'downwards'. I decided that this bore a similarity to the Lament tradition of the Baroque era, where many works were written over a repeating, descending bassline.

So I transcribed several strophes of greatly slowed-down woodlark song, then took two to form the bassline for a lament. This can be heard in the cello and baritone sax at the start of the main middle movement. The bassline is then systematically slowed down throughout the movement, so that, by its last iteration, it lasts over forty-five seconds. Over it is a patchwork of contrapuntal figures, much of them also drawn from the lark, but with excursions in other directions too. The introduction is an arrangement of the introduction to Lamento della ninfa by Claudio Monteverdi and the short epilogue consists simply of harmonisations of woodlark song. Why I've packed so much into such a short piece I don't know; my hope is that the bass holds everything together!

Duration: 8'

Instrumentation: Fl. Ob. Bari./Sop. Sax. 2 Perc. Pf. Vln. Vc.

First Performance: Hamburg Contemporary, Hochschule für Muisk und Theater Hamburg (27th September 2025).