Works

per orchestra

Tail Up is a provocation. A challenge to motivate you to “pick up your tail” and get on with it even if the world around you lets you down or seems hostile. It is an expression that struck me immediately when suggested to me by the writer Nadia Fusini, a distinguished Anglophone and expert in the works of Virginia Wolf. She told me how Woolf’s mother used this expression to encourage her daughter not to give too much weight to life’s little disappointments. In fact, the music for Tail Up is full of movement and dynamics. The four parts in the score react in sequence to reciprocal provocations while the orchestra sections respond to the harmonic and rhythmic stimuli with irony and mischief: scratching, sneering and saucy. The sweet and nervous wagging concludes with thumping tails in the last movement in a sort of lopsided, cubist and pataphysical waltz with the tails stiff and erect, gazing at reality with detachment. 

Commissioned by Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai

First performance:
Turin, Rai Nuova Musica, Auditorium, 17 febbraio 2012
Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI
Susanna Mållki, conductor 

Instrumentation:
ott. 2 (II anche ott).2.Cor i. 2 (II anche Cl b). 2.cfg / 4.4.3.1/ timp, perc, 2 A,  Pf / Archi

Duration: 20’ca.  

Score number catalogue Ricordi: (140720)