Lament

for solo bassoon (2017)

Performance Score

Commissioned and premiered by Michael Harley, Bassoon

by Fang Man

$20.00

SKU: FM-SI001 Category: Tag:

Description

Video


Duration

c. 12 minutes

Premiere

Premiered by Michael Harley, Bassoon.

Commissioner

Commissioned by Michael Harley, Bassoon.

Instrumentation

bassoon

Program Notes

Commissioned and premiered by Bassoonist Mike Harley, this work was composed between 2016-2017 and inspired by a poem from the anonymous late Ming novel Jin Ping Mei. The poem is selected from the novel’s chapter 5, which is a lament of Wu Dalang, the deceased husband of the novel’s central character Golden Lily. He was poisoned by Lily and their neighbor Granny Wang and expresses his feelings of excruciation and hopelessness in the song. As with a few other solo works of mine, I would like to explore the vocal possibilities of acoustic instruments such as the bassoon and utilize unconventional techniques such as singing while playing and extensive glissandi and vibratos in order to achieve this goal.

Poem-Lament