scraping song (1997 revised 2001) 9'
Commissioner: percussion solo
First Performer: written for and premiered by Steve Schick, 1 November 1998, New York City, NY
Instrumentation: percussion solo
Special Features:
Program note:
''scraping song'' was written for my friend Steven Schick. In some way it is meant to be a lyrical companion to my piece ''the anvil chorus,'' which I also wrote for Steve, and it comes directly out of two musical memories I have of him.
The first memory is from right after we met, in graduate school in 1978, when I watched Steve audition many different guiros for a performance of Stockhausen's ''Zyklus.'' Steve treated each guiro as if it were a violin, drawing from each an expressive range I never realized a percussion instrument could have.
The second memory is more recent, from Bang on a Can's arrangement of Brian Eno's ''Music for Airports.'' In the recording session I asked him to scrape a brake drum slowly around its rim. The resulting sound was so rich that I knew I would write a solo work about it.
—David Lang
