From Two Worlds
from the  Humours of Daryl Runswick  CD

 

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Dharambir Singh, sitar
Nancy Ruffer, flute
Neil Heyde, cello
Sarvar Sabri, tabla
Daryl Runswick, synthesiser

Daryl Runswick writes: From Two Worlds is scored for sitar, flute, cello, tabla, synthesiser and backing.

Here is a dialectic between Indian and Western music. The rhythms throughout are based on the rupak or 7-beat tal, in which the measure is 3+2+2 and the first beat is un-accented. The entire form of From Two Worlds is made from this basic shape. I invented my own rag for this piece and made the sitar tune to it.

I wanted to wrong-foot the performers, to make them play outside their comfort zones. So I made the Western performers improvise on the rag, and I changed things round for the Indian players: the tabla player is instructed to play sadly, hesitantly, not in the usual virtuosic way, and for the sitar I've put the alap – the traditional introductory passage – at the end. Indeed, the whole piece goes in the opposite direction from classical Indian music: the traditional order slow...faster...fastest is reversed here.


       

 

 

Recorded at Craxton Studios, London, 1994.
Engineer Mike Skeet. Produced by Daryl Runswick.

This composition and recording are covered by copyright.