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UCCELLO (2005)

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During a month-long sojourn in Rome early in the summer of 2005, I determined to pay close attention to the “vocal stylings” of the remarkable Eurasian blackbird (Turdus merula), a frequent neighbor in Trastevere, with an eye to perhaps making use of some of this bird-music in a work for solo cello. I took many long, leisurely strolls through the Villa Doria Pamphili, manuscript book and pencil in hand, writing down…, well, not exactly “what I heard,” since that would be, practicably speaking, impossible. Simply too much rhythmic freedom! Simply too many notes “in the cracks”!  No, what I wrote down was what I was inspired to imagine as a result of what I heard. Back home, these personal versions of the blackbird’s song became the raw material of “UCCELLO” (Italian for “bird,” of course), and everything else in the piece derives from this source material.

The work opens with several songs set forth, one after another, in the cello’s highest register, exactly as I’d notated them in Rome.  Then the music “takes off,” energetically knitting the motives into a pulsing portrait of the kinetic city. Soon the music shifts down, however, and a new combination of the bird fragments forms a longing and loving meditation on la città’s quieter, more intense, beauties.  After a complete moment of closure, the energetic material returns and builds to a whirling climax. At the very last, new bird-music is heard, until, as so often happened as I lingered, pencil poised, on a shadowed park bench, the song fades into the distance.

Sculpture & Photograph by Dennis Parker

Dennis Parker, cello (www.dennisparkerland.com)