Composer:\u00a0 George Crumb<\/p>\n
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Title:\u00a0 Mundis Canis (A Dog\u2019s World)<\/p>\n
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Number of Players:\u00a0 1 Guitarist, 1 Percussioinst<\/p>\n
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Approx. length: 10 minutes<\/p>\n
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Composer\u2019s Notes:<\/p>\n
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While contemplating the composition of a little dance piece for solo guitar for David Starobin (to be one of a series he was commissioning from several composers), I hit on the idea of creating a musical homage to the several dogs in my life. It occurred to me that the feline species had been disproportionally memorialized in music and I wanted to help redress the balance.<\/p>\n
And so, the “piece for solo guitar” metamorphosed into a little suite of five canine humoresques, each being a portrait and a character study of one of the Crumb family dogs. I have always known that dogs, like their biped masters, have various and distinct personalities. The addition of a percussionist, who provides a specific instrumental color for each piece, helped me to delineate each canine character.<\/p>\n
“Tammy”, a brown, short-haired, full-size dachshund, and the first dog in our family, exhibited qualities ranging from nobility to capriciousness. Her piece is inscribed “elegantly, somewhat freely” and the percussion component is a pair of maracas. The music ends in a scampering rush of movement which represents her more playful side. The surprising ambiguities in her canine “persona” are illustrated by a rubato<\/em> style of expression and the use of wildly contrasting registers.<\/p>\n “Fritzi’s” piece, marked furioso<\/em> in the score, expresses a pronounced impetuosity and irrepressibility of spirit. The percussionist plays a frame drum and the guitar writing is virtuosic in style and contains stingingly percussive pizzicato effects and knuckle-rapping on the wooden belly of the instrument. Fritzi was a brown male dachs of a lovable disposition despite his stubbornness and high-spirited antics.<\/p>\n The dog “Heidel” (acquired on a visit to Heidelberg, Germany) was our first long haired specimen of the breed, a rich brown in color, who exhibited a philosophical disposition and confounding depths of personality. Her sloth-like movements and hoard of secret lore are represented in the score by the indication languido, un poco misterioso<\/em>. The guitar style is quite coloristic with “bottleneck” playing and much pitch bending. The percussionist plays two tam-tams, the smaller of which is lowered into (or raised out of) a tub of water to produce the “water-gong” glissando effect.<\/p>\n “Emma-Jean” was a jet black miniature female dachshund of a definitely coquettish nature. There are abrupt changes of tempo and mood and the finely etched rhythmic gestures convey a sense of prissiness and archness. The guitar line is punctuated by claves and occasional soft strokes on a suspended cymbal.<\/p>\n The final character presented in our quintet of dogs is “Yoda” who was rescued from a New York City pound by my daughter Ann. He is a fluffy-white animal of mixed parentage (in which the bichon frise strain predominates) and mercurial temperament. The tempo marking for Yoda’s piece is prestissimo possible<\/em> and scurrying, scampering guitar passages are complemented by raspy guiro sounds and mounted castanets. But in an instant, all forgiven, Yoda plops in one’s lap!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n -George Crumb<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Categories:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mixed Ensemble<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Annotated by David Luidens<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Composer:\u00a0 George Crumb Title:\u00a0 Mundis Canis (A Dog\u2019s World) Number of Players:\u00a0 1 Guitarist, 1 Percussioinst Maracas, frame drum, large tam-tam, small tam-tam (to be dipped in and out of a tub of water), claves, suspended cymbal, guiro, mounted castanets Approx. length: 10 minutes Composer\u2019s Notes: While contemplating the composition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}