Lady Mondegreen's Dances
Bruce J. Taub
About this work:
A mondegreen is a word that is construed as it is actually heard, not as the speaker intends it to be heard. Coined by Sylvia Wright in 1954 (Harper's), the word refers to the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" and how she recited it as a child: "They hae slain the Earl Amurray,/And Lady Mondegreen." Willaim Safire explains that the damsel bleeding loyally beside the slain Earl was in her romantic imagination and that the last line was written "and laid him on the Green."
I read about this just as I was beginning work on a piece that was to be a set of three dance-like movements for six instruments and thought that in music, mondegreens occur natutally all of the time since each person hears a piece of music differently. The three movements are played without pause (actually, they overlap) and the piece is symmetrical. The first and third movements are in the same meter and tempo, and also share musical material. The percussionist plays only the vibraphone in the middle movement; the drums are used in the first and third movements. Lady Mondegreen's Dances has been performed by the University of Iowa New Music Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble (UC, Davis), Earplay (San Francisco) and on the Double Exposure series at Lincoln Center. It is published by C.F. Peters Corporation.
Year composed: 1994
Duration: 00:11:00
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Unknown
Instrumentation: 1 Flute, 1 Clarinet, 1 Percussion (General), 1 Piano, 1 Violin, 1 Cello
Instrumentation notes: fl(=alto), cl(=bcl)