Product Description
Shakespeare's Winks
three pieces for
recorder (and percussion ad libitum) or
flute, piccolo, cello, or any other melodic instrument.
1) Puck's
Pranks, 1:45
2) Cesario's
Trap, 2:15
3) Mercutio's
Puns, 3:00
Total duration: 7:00
All these pieces are related to different Shakespeare's
characters:
- Puck is a
great major character from Midsummer
Night's Dream. There are allusions to Shakespeare's lines hidden in the
score. As example: "Merry, shrewd and knavish" (the performance
indication in Puck's Pranks) is how
Shakespeare describes Puck in Midsummer
Night's Dream, act 2 scene 1. ("I am that merry
wanderer of the night."; "Or else you are that
shrewd and knavish sprite"). I can confess that since 1993 at the
latest, and perhaps before, I want to compose something related to Puck.
- Cesario is
actually Viola disguised as a man in
Twelfth Night. The trap is that she
cannot get out of that character that she invented and get trapped in the
fiction (but there is a happy end). "I am not what I am." This quote
is included in the score of Cesario's
Trap.
- Mercutio is an important secondary
character in Romeo and Juliet, he is
a friend of Romeo who permanently makes puns, word plays. For instance
"Dreamers often lie", in the double sense of "not saying the
truth" and "being horizontally in bed".
Musical language
The musical language in Shakespeare's Winks is decidedly tonal
(and modal). This piece provides an accessible avant-garde sound with a
transparent "melocentric" approach with a significant
emphasis on rhythm. Shakespeare's Winks
can be classified in the genre contemporary classical genre, neo-classical or
new simplicity.
Pedagogical aspect
When asked why Shakespeare's Winks is adequate for the curriculum
at conservatories or music schools, Cecilia Piehl answered:
Shakespeare's Winks is written in an ideal range for the piccolo, where you can work
sound in beginners or half-advanced students. The highest register in the
piccolo is a big challenge, and generally is in the high register where band
and orchestral Solos are written. As a result, many students who are just
beginning to play the piccolo, are forced to study "on extreme
repertoire".
This work offers a wide variety of articulations, which are so important in the piccolo. It is written
so that one can practice all these articulations exaggerating them in an almost
extreme way.
The phrases are not very long and that removes much of the problem
of tuning; the three movements allow to focus on this issue, but without asking
miracles from the student, especially if they are beginners.
If we consider the character of the three movements, we find much
variety: you can practice the cheerful and lively temperament but also the
slow, almost melancholic one. These are two very different roles to play in the
piccolo but also very typical, and one must be trained in order to use them. Playing
slow and melancholic in the piccolo is difficult to achieve and there are not
many pieces that use it - in the initial levels. Indeed, "Cesario's
Trap" (the second movement of this work) is very accessible to read and
technically speaking, but it allows to practice that expressive slowness.
About Cecilia Piehl:
http://ceciliaprice.instantencore.com
Recording
Shakespeare's Winks was
recorded by Cecilia Piehl (piccolo)
on May 4, 2016 at Ke
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.