Sparrow (2020)
Details
Description: Solo double bass
Duration: 9'
Instrumentation: Db. (scordatura)
Commission: Written for Marianne Schofield, as part of the Riot Ensemble's 2020 Zeitgeist Commissions, in collaboration with Zeitgeist, the PRS Foundation and BBC Radio 3.
First performance: Performed by Marianne Schofield, at Kings Place, London, on 30th April 2022.
First broadcast: Radio 3, New Music Show, 15th August 2020
Score link
Recording: Recorded by Marianne Schofield
Programme Note
I wrote this piece during the 2020 COVID-19 Crisis. Isolating with my partner and three friends in a small flat, we often convened on a roof. It overlooks a busy train line, from which a sprawling buddleia grows, and a row of gardens. Between the high-backed Victorian houses and the railway line, these form a canyon ruled by small birds. It was funny to me to depict these tiny birds on such a large instrument. Of course, a sparrow is, to itself, perfectly large, and its flitting filled with drama.
This piece is dedicated to those friends, in thanks for my time at Maygrove Road.
A note by Tim Rutherford-Johnson, written for the Riot Ensemble:
Sparrow is one of dozens of solo works commissioned by Riot Ensemble (and premiered on YouTube) in support of composers during the pandemic. It is inspired by the view behind the Kilburn flat in which Bates, his partner and three friends saw out the first Covid lockdown: a typical London canyon of gardens and railway line running between high-backed Victorian terraces. In the depths of lockdown, sparrows had exclusive access to this domain, flitting between empty commuter trains and families confined to their gardens. Sparrow is not representational as such: for a start, portraying such a small bird on such a large instrument is an amusing inversion of scale. And Bates’s work contains little of the characteristic fidgety chatter of sparrows in a hedge that recalls teenagers hanging around a bus stop after school. Instead, it is evocative of that strange spring in which human life retreated a little and nature expanded: the sparrow’s more-than-humanness captured in chiming microtones and harmonics, like the court music of a short-lived empire.
Description: Solo double bass
Duration: 9'
Instrumentation: Db. (scordatura)
Commission: Written for Marianne Schofield, as part of the Riot Ensemble's 2020 Zeitgeist Commissions, in collaboration with Zeitgeist, the PRS Foundation and BBC Radio 3.
First performance: Performed by Marianne Schofield, at Kings Place, London, on 30th April 2022.
First broadcast: Radio 3, New Music Show, 15th August 2020
Score link
Recording: Recorded by Marianne Schofield
Programme Note
I wrote this piece during the 2020 COVID-19 Crisis. Isolating with my partner and three friends in a small flat, we often convened on a roof. It overlooks a busy train line, from which a sprawling buddleia grows, and a row of gardens. Between the high-backed Victorian houses and the railway line, these form a canyon ruled by small birds. It was funny to me to depict these tiny birds on such a large instrument. Of course, a sparrow is, to itself, perfectly large, and its flitting filled with drama.
This piece is dedicated to those friends, in thanks for my time at Maygrove Road.
A note by Tim Rutherford-Johnson, written for the Riot Ensemble:
Sparrow is one of dozens of solo works commissioned by Riot Ensemble (and premiered on YouTube) in support of composers during the pandemic. It is inspired by the view behind the Kilburn flat in which Bates, his partner and three friends saw out the first Covid lockdown: a typical London canyon of gardens and railway line running between high-backed Victorian terraces. In the depths of lockdown, sparrows had exclusive access to this domain, flitting between empty commuter trains and families confined to their gardens. Sparrow is not representational as such: for a start, portraying such a small bird on such a large instrument is an amusing inversion of scale. And Bates’s work contains little of the characteristic fidgety chatter of sparrows in a hedge that recalls teenagers hanging around a bus stop after school. Instead, it is evocative of that strange spring in which human life retreated a little and nature expanded: the sparrow’s more-than-humanness captured in chiming microtones and harmonics, like the court music of a short-lived empire.
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Score
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Recording
Recorded Programme Notes
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