Cretan Lullaby

Year composed: 2010

Instrumentation: violin, piano

Duration (approx.): 10′

NOTES:

Commissioned by Stella Roshi-Moles for their senior recital, 2010.

First performed by Stella Roshi-Moles and Jay Derderian during Cascadia Composers’s 2-day spring festival, In Just Spring, on March 18th, 2011. Portland, Oregon.

AUDIO:

PROGRAM NOTES:

This piece is based off the first completely notated composition. It was discovered in 1883 by W.M Ramsey near Aydin Turkey and has been dated to around 200 B.C. – 100 B.C. It is a Skolion by a Hellenistic poet named Seikilos to his deceased wife, Euterpe.

This type of song was typically sung at the end of a symposium, and the singer usually sung with a lyre. The original marble tombstone uses Greek Notation which included letters, lines and dots above the letters indicating pitch and duration.

SONG’S TEXT (translation)

While you live, be happy [shine]
don’t suffer [be sad] anything at all;
[because] life is short
and time demands its toll [time leads to death]

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By Jay

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