Composer: Trevor Bača.
Forces: cello.
Duration: 9 minutes.
Page 3 (excerpt) of Nähte (2018) for cello.
Program note
The following inscription, written by the composer, appears at the head of the score:
Start again, hide the tracks, stitches in rungs, in place of seams only stoating. Turn under, mark, tailors’ tack holds the pattern, basting like chalk shows the way. At the end of the work only tissue — and for tissue read ‘text’ — in laces left open, cording drawn tight, synthetics bound in their bales. Gone in their time the scarring has left and his hands now show only their care. Fold upon fold she reads through the text, she quilts it in blocks that repeat. Wales stitched in series, backstitched in bundles, the feel of the work is its edges: edges drawn, edges mend, fingers wended, fingers close. She finishes heart wide-bright open. Tomorrow the brilliance of another cloak.
‘Nähte’ in German are stitches, and the music is about the joining together of body, movement, color and time, over and over in rows. Differences in bow speed — from quick skimmings of the strings to almost completely stopped — are taken as primary in the piece. Transitions between categories of bow speed are animated by quick actions of left hand — single-, double- and triple-harmonic trills, classes of vibrato — and also by cross-string tremoli and bow waverings executed by the right. The relentlessly fast coordinative movements of the cellist’s bow and body are modulated by the inventory of tempo types that structure the music: materials given only fleeting moments early in the piece come back later under the magnification of time and with a correspondingly transfigured effort of choreography — and sensitivity — on the part of the cellist and her movements in the music.
First performances
World premiere by Ashley Walters on 16 November 2018 at ArtShare LA in Los Angeles, California.
US East Coast premiere by Ashley Walters on 11 January 2019 at Spectrum in New York, New York.