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Soma: Chamber Ensemble Score

$75.00 USD
$75.00 USD
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Soma: Chamber Ensemble Score

Soma: Chamber Ensemble Score

for Sextet

By Ash Fure

Item: 98-EP68821
$75.00
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Description

Soma by Ash Fure is an 11-minute movement for mixed sextet. The composer writes:

"Soma is the second in a series of works engaging a specific psychological referent: my grandmother, who has advanced Parkinson's Disease. Instruments act out the disconnect her sickness causes between psychological intent and physical execution. Aberrations in placement, pressure, angle, force, and speed distort instrumental technique and interrupt the correlation between effort and audibility. With the syntax of movement scrambled, even the simplest of sounds turn fragile and chaotic. In Soma, instrumental bodies act as landscapes across which the limbs and fingers of performers must crawl."

As this note suggests, the "disconnect" Fure describes is achieved through the deployment of extended playing techniques. The cello part uses scordatura as well as circular bowing, multiphonics, and other unusual practices of bow and finger placement and pressure; the piccolo and bass clarinet play air sounds, overblow, and slap the keys; the pianist plays the inside of the piano with plastic, glass, duct tape, and bare hands; the percussion battery includes a large cardboard box and a tile of glass scraped with metal.

Somawas commissioned with a Staubach Honorarium by the Alice and Harry Eiler Foundation for performance at the 2012 Darmstadt Summer Course where it received a Stipendienpreis and a July 22 premiere by Curious Chamber Players.

Featuring extensive and detailed performance notes, this full score is available for purchase, with performance materials available on hire from the publisher.

This product is Printed on Demand and may take several weeks to fulfill. Please order from your favorite retailer.

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Additional Details
Publisher: Edition Peters
Page Count: 44
ISBN10: 0-300-76622-X
ISBN13: 979-0-300-76622-5
SKU: 98-EP68821
Instrumentation: Piccolo, Bass Clarinet, Violoncello, 2 Percussion, Piano

More about this title

About the Composer: Ash Fure

Ash Fure is a composer whose work explores the intersection of physical gesture, instrumental technique, and deeply personal narrative. Her pieces frequently employ extended playing techniques not as surface-level gestures but as structural and expressive necessities, rooted in specific emotional or experiential contexts that give the unconventional demands genuine urgency and meaning.

Why we love this

Soma demonstrates how extended techniques can serve a genuine compositional and human purpose rather than function as novelty. The detailed performance notes and the clear conceptual framework make this piece both intellectually rigorous and emotionally accessible to performers willing to engage deeply with the score. Programming a work of this substance signals to your ensemble that contemporary music can be profoundly moving.

What to expect

The piece unfolds as a landscape of fragmentation and effort, where simple sounds become unstable through distorted technique, mirroring the psychological disconnect between intention and physical action. There is vulnerability in the fractured sonorities and a strange kind of tenderness in watching performers navigate such demanding, delicate territory.

Who it's for

Adventurous chamber ensembles committed to contemporary music and willing to invest time in learning extended techniques with pedagogical clarity and artistic purpose. Performers should have solid fundamentals in their instruments and a genuine interest in how unconventional playing methods can deepen artistic expression.

How to get the most out of it

  • Study the performance notes thoroughly before any rehearsal; the scordatura, circular bowing, multiphonics, and prepared piano techniques are integral to the work's meaning, not decorative, so understanding the 'why' behind each instruction will deepen execution.
  • Establish a shared vocabulary with your ensemble about the physical sensations and sonic qualities Fure is asking for (fragility, discontinuity, effort without reward); this collaborative language helps performers find authenticity in unfamiliar techniques rather than mechanically executing notation.
  • Rehearse the prepared piano and percussion elements separately before combining with pitched instruments; the textural landscape depends on precise coordination between the cardboard box, glass tile, and interior piano sounds, which require their own focused attention.

How to use it

Soma works powerfully as a centerpiece in a contemporary chamber concert, especially alongside other works exploring gesture and physicality; its 11-minute duration and intimate ensemble size make it ideal for a themed concert on extended techniques or music inspired by personal narrative. It could also anchor a program dedicated to 21st-century chamber music, giving audiences a substantial and absorbing experience.

Skills your students will build

  • Extended cello techniques including scordatura, circular bowing, and multiphonics
  • Air sounds, overblowing, and key slaps on woodwinds
  • Interior piano preparation and performance techniques
  • Coordination in contemporary ensemble music with non-traditional sound sources
  • Interpreting detailed and unconventional notation and performance instructions
  • Building musical coherence from fragmented and discontinuous material

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