for two distanced asynchronous string players (violin[s], viola[s]) – 8 mins.

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Request pdf score and parts from Don Freund

Score (Free Download)

Program Note

The experience of performing this work is not a communication or depiction of anger: it IS anger, manifested in a physically exercised series of instrument-playing music-making actions. Do not play this piece unless you are able to channel blind, desperate anger into the experience.

The players may be connected via internet with some latency anticipated, or physically together but socially distanced in a performance venue. The players should be aware of each other’s sounds, but not in the sense of conversation or ensemble collaboration, but as something that influences in an imprecise way the scheduling of their events and creates a reinforcing ambience for their exertions.

The score is not music to be played, but material that provides the opportunity to unleash anger in the playing of an instrument, an alternative to kicking something violently or putting your fist through a wall.

The quiet moments are a veneer of indifference suppressing a pent-up rage, which intermittently bursts through pinholes in the surface.

Every moment of playing should spring from an intense visceral internal force directed through the composed musical material and structure.

Playing this work must not be a portrayal, a pretense of anger, or a phony tantrum: this anger is real. The events are generally asynchronized but concurrent, each player is isolated, acting out anger in their own private place.