related works
Phases of the Wind : Suite for band / Douglas Knehans
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Wind ensemble (13 or more players)
Scoring:
2fl 2cl cl-b sax-a sax-t sax-bar h 2tpt 2trb euph tb timp 6perc
Passage : opus 65, for orchestra, 1987 / Jo van den Booren
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Orchestra
Scoring:
2222 4231 timp str
Suite da sonar no. II : 1955 / Jan van Dijk
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Orchestra
Scoring:
2222 2310 str
Symphony Nº 3 in F major, op. 90 : for orchestra / Johannes Brahms
Genre:
Orchestra
Subgenre:
Orchestra
Scoring:
2fl 2ob 2cl 2bsn bsn-c 4h 2trp 3trb timp str
composition
Black City : Concerto for violoncello and orchestra Nº 2 / Douglas Knehans
Other authors:
Knehans, Douglas
(Composer)
Contains:
Letter to a Friend—(Expressive)
River on Fire—(Scherzo)
It Will Be Rain Tonight—(Passacaglia)
You Asked What the Heart Can Carry—(Cadenza)
Midst of a Burning Fiery Furnace—(Finale)
Description:
My second cello concerto Black City sits in contrast in many ways to my first cello concerto Soar. My first concerto is in one long movement with rather conventional scoring and is about striving and our innate urge to overcome and grow.
My second concerto, in contrast, is first of all on a much larger scale or ‘bigger canvas’ than the first concerto being cast in five rather long movements, each with an internal intensity that links them and creates the narrative thread of the music. Much of this music is about degradation, erosion and loss. As with most of my music I mean these somewhat geological ideas as metaphors for internal psycho-emotional change that takes place within us. As we grow and change it is not always about gain and stability but can also be about loss, diminishment and structural change. The metaphor of a rich internal city slowly eroding gave rise to the title of the work. I was extremely fortunate to come across the amazing poetry of the young American poet Dave Lucas, whose take on the decaying Midwestern cities of the United States (where I was both born and now live) had in them many internal and external metaphors that seemed so appropriate to my work.
Each movement has an inscription taken from Mr. Lucas’s poems from the volume Weather, while each also has a different structure and character despite the narrative thread that links them.
Douglas Knehans