'twas Brillig
2024
This short piece for solo piccolo and strings is a musical depiction of what I imagine the jungle in Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky to be like - before the eponymous monster and knight with snicker-snacking vorpal blade turn up. The poem mentions a "Jubjub bird" - in my piece, this part is played by the solo piccolo. The rest of the jungle (slithy toves, mimsy borogroves, mome raths and so on) is played by the strings, on a particularly brillig day.
We might imagine that the Jabberwocky itself turns up in terrible majesty at the end of the piece.
This bird is not a Jubjub, but a Great Tinamou, caught on a camera trap on the Los Amigos conservation area in the Amazon by Amazon Conservation - click for the full video, which is soundless, so perhaps take 'twas Brillig as your soundtrack!
Duration
8 minutes
Instrumentation
Solo piccolo, strings
First performance
September 2024, Todmorden Summer Orchestra project (soloist: Carisse White)
Listen
Carisse White (piccolo) and the Todmorden Summer Orchestra project (live recording)
Request a score / parts
If you would like to see a score and/or require a set of parts for this music, please contact me.