Kindersang. Composition for Soprano and Violin. Premiered at West Cork Chamber Music, July 2018.
- Submitting institution
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Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- Gribbin1
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- June
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
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- Criminology
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- Interdisciplinary
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- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
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- Reserve for an output with double weighting
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- Additional information
- Kindersang (2018), a song-cycle, is the result of collaboration with soprano Caroline Mezler and violinist Nurit Stark. Written to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport Movement, which brought 10,000 Jewish children to the UK before the Second World War it was performed in Ireland, London, and New York. Growing up in the politically volatile Belfast of the 1970’s my music identifies with conflict and displacement. Having a Jewish husband and son with Down Syndrome, I pondered his fate had he lived in Nazi Germany. Kindersang is based on poems by 97-year-old Lotte Kramer, a Kindertransport survivor whom Gribbin consulted with extensively. This first hand insight impacted her choice of poems. Exploration of Jewish music at the New York Public Library, and Berlin’s Jewish Museum Kindertransport archive informed characterization and narrative. Kindersang combines songs with violin solo interludes. Harmonic progression references Jewish folksong. The last song transcribes the emblematic ‘Kol Nedrei’ chant to Kramer’s ‘Kol Nedrei’ poem. Throughout, rhythmic strophes determined by text syllabic construction and syntax, combine with limited pitch-class sets created specifically for each song from atonal fragments and Jewish cantor intonations. Violin interludes placed at key structural points create stability and ebb and flow. There is conscious attempt to connect the individual timbre of voice and violin in combination giving the illusion that sound emanates from a singular source, as ‘voice-violin’ rather than separate entities. This is evidenced through the violin ‘mute’, ‘sul tasto’, and ‘glissandi’ in ‘Red Cross Telegram’ against which the soprano paces nuanced text unveiling a stark new reality. There is a destabilization of harmony through pitch bending foreshadowing destructive malfunction depicted in ‘Deportation’s’ dramatic climax. There, voice and violin collide explosively. Kindersang expands musically from the innocent child’s world to that of the adult survivor who cannot undo the realities of memory. https://www.cmc.ie/events/2018/nov/kindersang-uk-premiere-deirdre-gribbin-work
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
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- English abstract
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