Stone Dancer

£25.00

SKU Code: FBR-46639

**THIS IS AN A3 SCORE. CHECK THE PRINT PROPERTIES PRIOR TO PRINTING TO ENUSRE IT FITS TO SCALE ON A4.**

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THIS IS THE SCORE ONLY AND PARTS ARE NOT INCLUDED. TO HIRE SCORE AND PARTS, PLEASE VISIT WWW.ZINFONIA.COM.

Co-commissioned by Aldeburgh Music and 14-18 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England and by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.

This work was composed in 2016 and ﬁrst performed on 17 June 2016 at Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Suﬀolk, UK, by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Oliver Knussen.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Futurist sculpture from the early 20th century drives the concept behind Stone Dancer. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s Red Stone Dancer, Raymond Duchamp-Villon’s Large Horse and Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space were all created during the years 1913-14, and each of the artists served in some capacity in the First World War.

The muscular, undulating movement of Gaudier-Brzeska’s Red Stone Dancer has a forceful presence and the stored energy of the ﬁgure grips the viewer. Duchamp-Villon’s Large Horse is an abstract evocation of the dynamic energy and power of a leaping horse and rider: the distorted, curved and angular geometric shapes suggest a galloping movement. In Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, a ﬁgure is eﬀortlessly sprinting through the air, deformed by its speed.

‘The vortex is the point of maximum energy. It represents, in mechanics, the greatest eﬃciency’ stated Ezra Pound in his essay Vortex in 1914. Pound was seeking to capture the mechanical dynamism of the age, as well as the stillness at its core. Harnessing itself to the intrinsic vigour of enterprise, the Futurist movement was founded by writers and artists who embraced new ideas and inventions.

The substance, power and implied movement captured in each of the sculptures weave the three movements of Stone Dancer together. Following a Futurist approach, the paradoxical notion of displaying movement and a sense of stillness in one ‘image’ is built up through varying layers within the piece, on both the harmonic and rhythmic planes.

The ﬁrst movement is light and agile, and ﬂourishes ﬁll the score with luminosity. The second evokes the feeling of slow motion, yet the underlying pace remains constant. The focus shiis back to the faster layer of material in the third movement, powering through in a glistening vortex. In contrast to the earthy ﬁrst movement, here the music is void of anything that grounds the piece, an avoidance of lower registers.

Composer/Author: Charlotte Bray

Instrumentation: Orchestra

Format: PDF

Pages: 41

Brand: Faber

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