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Dark Ages (1987-90) |
solo cello (two bows) - 7'
Dark ages , written in the summer of 1990, was commissioned by the Gaudeamus Foundation and is dedicated to Frances-Marie Uitti, who gave the first performance in Amsterdam on 5 September 1990. Dark ages is the ninth in a sequence of eleven compositions (for varying instrumentations) collectively entitled Fictions. It is also the second in a more informal "series" of works for solo 'cello, three of which are complete at the time of writing. Together with the third, praha (1991), it uses the two-bow technique originally developed by Frances-Marie Uitti.
The form of Dark ages could be described as "archaeological": a "surface" layer, typically oscillating between one and four chorale-like parts, is subject to "excavations" which interrupt its slow unfolding and reveal further layers, often corroded and fragmentary, sometimes vanishing into lacunae as if irretrievably lost from the tablets of an ancient text. Such reference to the imaginary remnants (and losses) from a fictional past is common to a number of my recent works. But it is only one interpretation. Another might be suggested by the short poem by Paul Celan which prefaces the score:
WEGGEBEIZT
vom
Strahlenwind deiner
Sprache
das bunte Gerede das An-
erlebten - das hundert -
złngige
Mein-
gedicht, das Genicht.
© Richard Barrett, June 1992