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Snakebite (1995) |
chamber orchestra - 14'
Commissioned by Citibank N.A. for the Orchestra of St. Johns, Smith Square, London.
First performance: 6 October, 1995, Hopetoun House, nr. Edinburgh, Scotland. The Orchestra of
St. John's, Smith Square, London John Lubbock, conductor.
Compact disc recording (1997): ASV DCA991 CD title: Snakebite The Orchestra of St. John's,
Smith Square, London, John Lubbock, conductor (released 1997).
The inspiration for writing Snakebite came from a five month visit in 1995 to one of the great watering holes for country music, Austin, Texas. I spent the daytime teaching 'classical' composition at the university, but the real excitement was at night listening to country fiddlers like Alvin Crow at The Broken Spoke playing 'Texas Style' while the local cowboys put headlocks on their girlfriends and wives to dance the Texas Twostep on the beer stained floor.
Country Music was once called 'Hillbilly Music' and is an extension of the folk music originally imported in the 18th and 19th centuries by Scottish, Irish and English settlers moving inland to the rural areas of the southern United States. Through their isolation numerous styles developed. The 'Texas Style' or 'Western Swing Fiddling' was one: a combination of Southern rural fiddling, Louisiana jazz, big band swing, and Western cowboy life.
No concert composer or classical orchestra can really do justice to the virtuosity one good country fiddler and his cohorts impose on a folk tune. But like Chopin writing mazurkas and Astor Piazzolla's tangos, I wanted to create a concert work with little 'country' folk flavour for an orchestra in the concert hall. The melody is Dusty Miller, a traditional Texas fiddle tune in the unusual key of the mixolydian mode (g to g on the white keys of the keyboard).
The title of the work was inspired by a visit to the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweet- water, Texas. During the bizarre week of festivities, an old cowboy who had survived a near fatal rattlesnake bite told us how the plains Indians traditionally dealt with such a calamity. When they were bitten they quietly lay down on the desert floor, trying not to panic, and closed their eyes. If they could will their heartbeat to remain sufficiently slow for 18 hours as the poison blackened their bodies and swelled their limbs, they stood at least half a chance of survival.
I translated this grim image to a moment in my work when the Dusty Miller theme runs into the 'poison' of an alien tune from a completely different key. The conductor's right arm slowly passes around the orchestra signalling the passage of the 'poison' element through it. It destroys Dusty Miller, but only briefly. The tune ultimately survives.
Special thanks to folk fiddler, Pete Cooper, for suggestions on idiomatic fiddle writing for the solo violin passages in the middle of the work.
Notes © 1995, Stephen Montague