We are excited to continue our collaboration with the New York Women Composers (NYWC). This month, we present a piece by Juliana Hall.
Bio
“Juliana Hall is primarily a composer of art song, monodrama, and vocal chamber music, but she has also written instrumental works for musical family and friends, including Ding Dong Bell for solo cello. More than 900 musicians have performed her music and she has written works for dozens of singers, among them Brian Asawa, Stephanie Blythe, Anthony Dean Griffey, Zachary James, Dawn Upshaw, and Kitty Whately.
Hall’s music has been heard worldwide, at the 92nd St. Y, Concertgebouw Recital Hall, Library of Congress, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Weill Recital Hall, and Wigmore Hall, in addition to the Buxton, Carmel Bach, Lerici, Mostly Modern, Norfolk Chamber, Ojai, and Oxford International Song festivals. Her music has been taught at 250 music schools, as well as the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar, SongFest, and Tanglewood Music Center, and her work is published by E. C. Schirmer and Boosey & Hawkes.” – Juliana Hall
Featured Work: Ding Dong Bell for solo cello
COMPOSITION DETAILS
- Title: Ding Dong Bell
- Composer: Juliana Hall
- Year of Composition: 2006
- Instrumentation: unaccompanied cello
- Movements: 8
- Duration of Work: 12 minutes
- Number of Measures: 182
- Number of pages: 6
- Tempo:
- I: Very Still (quarter=40)
- II: Pleadingly (quarter=58)
- III: Energetically (quarter=96)
- IV: Dark Dance (quarter=192)
- V: As a Lullaby (eighth=69)
- VI: Wild, Frenzied (quarter=126)
- VII: Dolesomely (quarter=58)
- VIII: As a Dirge (eighth=84)
- Difficulty Level: advanced/professional
- Highest Position Reached: thumb
- Techniques Employed: use of both a wooden mute and a rubber mute; left-hand pizzicato; artificial harmonics; sul ponticello; sul tasto; glissandos; held “drone” notes while playing melody on another string
- Publisher: Juliana Hall Music
- Where to Purchase the Score: J.W. Pepper
- Cost of Score*: $11.95
Recording
You may request a recording by contacting Hall directly via email.
Program Notes
“Although I am primarily a composer of art songs, monodramas, and vocal chamber music, cello holds a special place for me. My husband is a cellist, and it was for him that I composed Ding Dong Bell, and I have included cello in several vocal works as well. The cello has an extraordinary range, from low to high, but also an extraordinary range of emotional and artistic sounds available to composers. I think of it as perhaps the most vocal of instruments, so as a vocal music composer, writing for cello always feels quite natural.” – Juliana Hall
Performance Notes
“Ding Dong Bell was written for my husband, who is a cellist. As with all of my dozen or so solo and duo instrumental works (each written for a friend or family member who makes music), the music itself has an inspiration based in literature.
Poems by the great English poet Walter de la Mare have been set by scores of vocal music composers, but in Ding Dong Bell it is a book of de la Mare’s epitaphs that provides inspiration. Each of the eight brief movements of the piece represents a character, a person, for whom de la Mare has written an epitaph.
Aside from technical challenges, which are there but not too daunting, Ding Dong Bell provides the cellist with an opportunity to portray the various characteristics and life moments of a variety of colorful personalities. Although these personalities are widely varied, shaped by their life circumstances and the length of each character’s life immortalized in the epitaphs, there are instrumental techniques and melodic and harmonic materials that span the entire set of epitaphs so there is a strong sense of cohesion and logic to the set.
In Walter de la Mare’s epitaphs there are not only descriptions of the characters but there is also a sense of reverence for the lives they lived. The cello, with its extraordinary range of emotion and tone quality, is the perfect instrument to bring to life the final records of people who have passed on, while effectively creating that sense of reverence for them, and awe for the life force that passes through each of us.” – Juliana Hall
How to Follow, Support, and Contact Juliana Hall
A Collaboration with the New York Women Composers (NYWC)
The NYWC series at the Cello Museum was created to showcase its members who have composed works for cello, informing cellists seeking new music to add to their repertoire, and helping listeners find new favorites. Many thanks to the NYWC for this wonderful collaboration.
Read other installments in the series here.
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*Prices are accurate at the time of article publication, but the Cello Museum cannot take responsibility for subsequent price changes.
