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Score title
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I Give You the End of a Golden String
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Composer
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Judith Weir
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Date
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2011-2013
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Instrumentation
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String orchestra
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Program note
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My aim when I began this piece was to create a long length of string music out of a single strand of melody. While experimenting at the beginning, shaping and extending a melody in many possible directions, I came across William Blake’s lines….
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalems’s wall
…and this became my working method, winding a single tune around itself so that it gradually formed itself into a much richer, more complex texture. The process happens three times, producing the equivalent of a continuous three movement concerto.
The ‘first movement’ is engendered by two solo violas (the melody at the beginning already entwined with a slightly alternative version of itself). The ‘slow movement’ (a more extended, more decorated development of the opening tune) is introduced by a solo cello (soon winding itself into a quartet of celli). The fast ‘finale’, led by two solo violins, focuses on decorations within the melody, rolling out ribbons of (Britten-like?) thirds. The duration of the whole piece is around sixteen minutes.
I give you the end of a golden string was commissioned by the Britten-Pears Foundation and the Royal Philharmonic Society.
Judith Weir
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Interview with Judith Weir about I Give You the End of a Golden String
Judith Weir
