Hommage to Anonymous Ancient Fiddlers

Texu Kim, composer
Rannveig Marta Sarc and Brian Hong, violins
New York Classical Players, production

Entertainment has been one of the most significant functions of music and virtuosity is one of the keys to that. One may recall some representative examples such as Paganini and Liszt, but I believe that there have been many more unknown heroes in music history. This piece, as the title attempts to show, is about the anonymous ancient fiddlers – their impressive skills and their endeavor to acquire them. This piece has numerous virtuosic variations of a simple imaginary ancient melody. In order to add some more ‘ancient flavor’ and to make the piece more virtuosic, I incorporated several techniques such as hockets (distributed melody between two players), triple and quadruple stops, and detuning effect, all of which are from pre-Baroque era.