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Compositions *** |
Oda a las Ranas
year
1980
duration
10 ½ minutes
instrumentation
Women’s chorus, flute, oboe, cello and percussion
text
Pablo Neruda
commission
Anna Crusis Women’s Choir
première
June 13, 1981, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Anna Crusis Women’s Ensemble, Jean Leavitt, narrator, Lore Silverberg, flute, Mary Ellen Corwin, oboe, Lori Barnett, cello, Flossie Ierardi, percussion, Catherine Roma, conductor
recording
Available on demo CD
program notes
Fine divided the women’s choir into four parts and chose a simple instrumentation of flute, oboe, and cello with a colorful array of percussion using ratchets, gongs, cymbals, castanets, and vibraphone. The vibraphone provides pitch support, and at one point…the voices are asked to match the vibraphone timbre. Like she did in the nightingale texts in previoius music, Fine enjoyed writing froglike text painting, using quivering figures and doubly dotted rhythms to portray the text and having the cello add percussive textures of snapped and glissandi pizzicati. Frequently the voices are doubled by the instruments, making Oda a las Ranas accessible.
–Heidi Von Gunden, The Music of Vivian Fine, Scarecrow Press, 1999