Six Episodes forming a Threnody

Runswick, Daryl

About the work

The piece and its form are elegaic in tone are adequately described by the title. My mother died very recently and the threnody (funeral lament) is for her. Episode One has a melody in the string harmonics against bell sounds in the electronics. Episode Two is more unsettled, while Episode Three has a rich unison in the strings, developing into canon, against an unconnected ostinato in the electronics. Episode Four, for strings alone, pitches wisps of solo against soft chords in tutti. Episode Five becomes agitated again, before subsiding into Episode Six, a varied repetition of the opening harmonics; this last section is marked “very tenderly, like a goodbye. 

First Performance: CoMA Summer School String Orchestra, 2nd Aug 1996, Bretton Hall, West Yorkshire

Technical notes

Scored for string orchestra and computer-generated electronics.The piece consists of a some sections of conventionally notated music, and others produced using various string effects, the overall effect being one of great variety but coherence of emotional communication.

Origin

Written for the 1996 CoMA Summer School