loon
homage to an unknown renaissance composer
(2024)

Composer's notes:

I was spending some time online listening to birdsongs and calls and trying to notate them as best I could, when I stumbled upon a particularly stunning recording of two Common Loons (sometimes known as Great Northern Divers or "Eistaucher" in German) calling to each other across a Canadian lake. I transcribed the call at the piano, trying to emulate the wonderful 'lamentoso' quality of the call, the way it strains up to a top A and then sighs back down again in an arc-shape. A few months later I heard a recording of Mille Regretz, a chanson often attributed to Josquin, although there is little evidence it was by him. I was struck by the similarities of the chanson to the Common Loon call. Not only do both sounds contain that 'lamentoso' quality, the opening motif of the chanson is also a sighing arc-shape, with an A at its pinnacle. I decided to elucidate these parallels in a piece modelled on the structure of the chanson (albeit with repetitions not contained in the original) but with my transcription of the Common Loon call as the musical material.

Duration: 6.5'

Instrumentation: Three violins

First Performance:
Players of the Ensemble Resonanz at Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater, 16.05.2024.

Swantje Tessmann (Violin 1)
Christine Krapp (Violin 2)
Skaistė Dikšaitytė (Violin 3)