Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky
Ellen Lindquist
About this work:
"Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky", composed for Trent Petrunia during the winter 2003 residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Canada, was inspired by Canadian painter Emily Carr’s 1936 painting of the same name.
“There’s a torn and splintered ridge across the stumps I call the 'screamers.' These are the unsawn last bits, the cry of the tree’s heart, wrenching and tearing apart just before she gives that sway and that dreadful groan of falling, that dreadful pause while her executioners step back with their saws and axes resting and watch. It’s a horrible sight to see a tree felled even now, though the stumps are grey and rotting. As you pass among them you see their screamers sticking up out of their own tombstones, as it were. They are their own tombstones and their own mourners.”
Hundreds and Thousands, The Journals of Emily Carr (1934)
Year composed: 2003
Duration: 00:08:00
Ensemble type: Solo instrument, non-keyboard:Marimba
Instrumentation: 1 Marimba