Output details

Lament (cello octet)

Lament sets out to choreograph and explore the particular expressive physicality of cello playing, drawing attention to its gestural aspect through extensive use of homophony in an ensemble of multiple cello soloists (without conductor). The piece was strongly influenced by Sam Taylor-Wood’s video piece Prelude in Air (2006), a work in which a cellist is filmed playing a Bach Prelude, but the cello has been digitally removed from the image, thereby exaggerating yet simultaneously making rather ambiguous the cellist’s movements.

The rhythmic and textural material is designed to explore and project the ensemble’s ability to use physical gesture to co-ordinate their playing much as does a string quartet, but also to create visual patterns of symmetry and asymmetry across the stage. The title Lament refers to a Georgian funeral song, a zari, whose influence can be clearly heard, although the original material itself does not appear.

The piece was first written in 2008 for the Endymion Ensemble (for seven cellos), and revised in 2010 for the Amsterdam Cello Octet (for eight cellos). It is submitted here in the later version, as recorded by BBC Radio 3 on 26/05/2011.