Piseq: Ritus III

Niels Rosing-Schow

General Info

Year: 1990
Duration: c. 16:15
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Hansen
Cost: Score and Parts - $0.00   |   Score Only - $0.00

Instrumentation

Multiple Percussion:

Saxophone

Program Notes

premiere: 13 October 1996, Gladsaxe Hovedbibliotek, Denmark, DuoDenum

PISEQ (1996) Ritus III for Alto Saxophone and Percussion

Ritus I-III is a small series of works written for slaughterers or percussion combined with other instruments. They are characterized by some form of 'ethnic' inspiration. In Ritus III it is very specific, namely a little Greenlandic melody, which I have learned to know through the musicologist Michael Hauser's book "Traditional Greenlandic Music" . Here it is said that the song is part of the legend "Anoritôk":

"The story tells of the woman Anoritôk whose son had been killed by the other hunters because he was drilling them. Instead, they gave her a bear who she took off and raised. The bear was playing with the children's settlement, and later the hunters took it with in search of food, it was very good to provide food for his foster mother, but when the hunt failed, it began to steal from the other hunters' meatbeds. Finally, they killed it. Anoritus drove in vain and went up behind the houses and sang:

She who believes to have a bear as a child is marked by so much search, a bear, a bear, a bear.

She was singing for a long time and eventually she became a rock. People used to bring her sacrifices and overshadow her mouth with whale shark. "

The Greenlandic tune occurs at the end ofRitus III , but also sporadically given substance to other parts of the work. The passage of the piece is not deliberately thought as a reflection of the story narrative; I have borrowed the melody for its catchy musical qualities. The course of the work alternates between harmonic / sound-shaped paragraphs and more melodic / rhythmically-embossed sections.

The word Piseq expresses in the North Greenland tradition the personal ownership of a drummer song. With this title, I wish to point at once the Greenlandic inspiration and express the acquisition of the work to DuoDenum.

Recent Performances

To submit a performance please join the TEK Percussion Database

Works for Percussion by this Composer

Piseq: Ritus III - Multiple Percussion, Saxophone Ritus I - Multiple Percussion, Flute
Ritus II - Percussion Trio
Ritus III - See Piseq: Ritus III