Double Bass,String Bass Solo - Digital Download SKU: A0.1347908 Composed by Alan Edgar. 21st Century. Individual part. 10 pages. Alan Edgar Ted Moon #932722. Published by Alan Edgar Ted Moon (A0.1347908). Jacques Cousteau, Father of the Aqualung, wrote: The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder for ever.This piece, for virtuoso double bass, imagines a scuba-diver encountering large animals, and consists of a suite of short depictions of animals in the form of variations on a melody plus a recurrent new melody representing the diver's smooth movements and bubbles. The variations are: Lobster Jazz Waltz, Sea-anemone Belly-dance, Tuna Tune, Luminous Light Show, Dolphin Fling, Jaws Serial and Blues Whale Pavane.The piece lasts about eight minutes with repeats.TECHNICAL NOTE The C harmonics will be a pip flat--they are only bursting bubbles anyway!Scuba Fins tries to feel the quiet calmness and agelessness of the underwater world, using the ancient and universal major pentatonic scale C,D,E, G,A ,C. The rhythm is mostly steady and simple, but triplets indicate the occasional extra effort. Now and again, he glances down at the infinite depths. Tintinnabulation and soft staccatissimo arpeggios represent the bubbles. Lobster Waltz is a jazz waltz with many staccato notes and leaps representing the many appendages and the tangle of lively giant crustaceans.Sea-anemone Belly-Dance pictures the soft body and tentacles swaying under the waves, using the Arabic scale Shad 'Araban, roughly G,Ab, B,C,D,Eb,F#,G and influenced by a dance to the folk tune known as Bint El-Salabiya.Tuna Tune is a quick moto perpetuo in the cheerful major mode, septuple time, the rapid rise and fall of the phrases and of volume reflecting the powerful shoal's unpredictable, ceaseless movements, approaching and retreating.Dolphin Fling is a stathspey, or highland fling, using the major mode and typical dance rhythms including the Scotch snap to depict the weighty but intelligent dolphins enjoying their leisure time and perhaps dancing with the diver.Jaws Serial reminds us of the fear a shark generates, using the dissonant 12-note serial mode and unpredictable leaps and pauses. The opening slow trill will chill you as it invokes the Jaws film theme by John Williams. You might even hear the diver's heart sink and the snap pizzicato of the teeth snapping. The prime row is the nearest possible to the original theme: Bb, Ab, F, Eb, B, C, E, G, Db, D, Gb.A, but I have followed the contours of the main themes. Blues Whale is a pavane, a slow, stately processional incorporating the typical renaissance drum rhythm. and using a blues scale, G, A, Bb, C, C#, D, F, G, and an implied 12-bar minor blues harmony.

Double Bass,String Bass Solo - Level 5 - Digital Download SKU: A0.1018899 Composed by Benjamin Harry Sajo. 20th Century,Contemporary. Individual part. 3 pages. Benjamin Sajo #6056133. Published by Benjamin Sajo (A0.1018899). Programme Notes: Icarus Also Flew takes its title from the first line of the poem Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert. He is referring to the classical myth of Daedalus and Icarus, an inventive father and son who bravely escape from their imprisonment in a tower by collecting the disposed feathers of seabirds, then fashion wings out of them and fly away. While the story is often treated as a morality tale--listen to your elders, don’t get cocky like the young man, Icarus, who, in such an understandable state of elation, ascended too close to the sun thus causing the wings to melt and his tumbling to his Mediterranean death--what Jack Gilbert reminds us is how regardless of one’s failure, the sheer transcendental experience of mortal flight remains glorious and unforgettable. Icarus’s fall was not into a legacy of disdain and oblivion, but in truth, he had come to the end of his triumph. This piece was the first of a series I composed during the Covid-19 quarantine conditions of 2020, to serve as potential contemporary preludes for each of Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies--his two hundred and fiftieth anniversary was this year!--though they can all stand on their own on any program. The connection, in this case, is with his celebrated fifth symphony in C minor--the Fate symphony, as it is commonly known. I’ll let the listener find their own connections.About the Composer:Benjamin Sajo (b. 1988) is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music, as well as an educator. Since developing a fiercely independent creative voice upon the completion of his studies at Western (2010) and McGill Universities (2013), he continues to find inspiration from the intersection of mythology, art, and nature upon the contemporary human experience. In 2019, he released his premiere album of original music, The Great War Sextet: Canadian War Poetry with Trombone & Strings, with support from the Ontario Arts Council. He is a member of SOCAN and the League of Canadian Composers.