songlines

for two violins, viola, violoncello and double bass in various combinations

«songlines» is a compilation of pieces for string instruments. The pieces can be performed in this context or independently.

Songlines are an ancient cultural concept of Australian's indigenous peoples. By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, indigenous peoples could navigate vast distances (often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interiority). An interesting feature of the paths is that, as they span the lands of several different language groups, different parts of the song are said to be in those different languages. Thus the whole song can only be fully understood by a person speaking all the relevant languages.

The songlines compositions also explore a wide spectum of ‹musical language›. And, hopefully, they can bring the listener as well as the musician to a new place they haven‘t been before.

	instrumentation	duration	first performance
songlines 1	for 2 violins, viola, violoncello	open	-	score
songlines 2	for violin, viola, violoncello, double bass	4.5 minutes	-	score
songlines 3	for violin and violoncello	14 minutes	-	score
songlines 4	for violin and viola	5 minutes	-	score
songlines 5	for double bass (+ string quartet)	2.5 minutes	-	score

More songlines will be available soon.

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