Tasalsul VI (2022) – ca. 6'
trumpet
Premiere Performance
This work has not been premiered. Please inquire for details. Recording pending.
This work has not been premiered. Please inquire for details. Recording pending.
PROGRAM NOTE
Tasalsul VI, or “sequence” in Arabic, takes its name from Luciano Berio’s Sequenze, though it more closely resembles the work of his Italian contemporary, Giacinto Scelsi. In the first movement of Scelsi’s Quattro pezzi for solo trumpet, the composer explores a quasi-folkloric language filled with very deliberately notated melodies that are to me reminiscent of the Arab taqsim, a type of solo improvisation (that is never written down!) that typically precedes a performance. In my re-imagining of il primo pezzo, I established a form that transformed Scelsi’s lines to modes found in traditional Arab music, most notably the rast and bayati modes, which are notated in the score. These modal shifts are signaled through the seemingly constant insertion and removal of the mute, which can be more readily achieved with the implementation of the double bell trumpet.