Fure: Soma

Description

Soma by Ash Fure is an 11-minute movement for mixed sextet. The composer writes:

"Soma is the second in a series of works engaging a specific psychological referent: my grandmother, who has advanced Parkinson's Disease. Instruments act out the disconnect her sickness causes between psychological intent and physical execution. Aberrations in placement, pressure, angle, force, and speed distort instrumental technique and interrupt the correlation between effort and audibility. with the syntax of movement scrambled, even the simplest of sounds turn fragile and chaotic. in Soma, instrumental bodies act as landscapes across which the limbs and fingers of performers must crawl."

As this note suggests, the "disconnect" Fure describes is achieved through the deployment of extended playing techniques. The cello part uses scordatura as well as circular bowing, multiphonics, and other unusual practices of bow and finger placement and pressure; the piccolo and bass clarinet play air sounds, overblow, and slap the keys; the pianist plays the inside of the piano with plastic, glass, duct tape, and bare hands; the percussion battery includes a large cardboard box and a tile of glass scraped with metal.

Soma was commissioned with a Staubach Honorarium by the Alice and Harry Eiler Foundation for performance at the 2012 Darmstadt Summer Course where it received a Stipendienpreis and a July 22 premiere by Curious Chamber Players.