Instrumentation freestyle:
Guitar (solo) Guitar 2 Flute (dbl. picc) Clarinet in Bb Trumpet in C Vibraphone Harp Piano Violin Viola Cello
Composer's note: “The Calm Bee in the Busy Hive” grows out of a single sonority, the strum of the guitar’s
strings, retuned to evoke the overtone series of it low E. The
image of the piece is of the soloist as a calm, directed force in the midst
of increasing activity. The subtitle of the work and the individual movement
titles underscore this meaning.
The first movement literally constructs itself in real time. The soloist is
progressively surrounded by concentric layers of music, played in turn by:
second guitar; vibraphone; string trio; woodwind trio; harp and piano. In
addition, the music in each outer layer moves to the next outermost with each
addition, like ripples in a pool. Thus, it’s a canonic structure, though
with free variation of material from layer to layer. When all the instruments
have entered, the movement can end.
List Price:
$24.50 conductor's score