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Samuel Gray  

Ethnic Conflict for String Ensemble

Duration: 09' 30" Year: 2010
for 13 string players

• Instrumentation
  for 13 string players (4,4,2,2,1) or for full string orchestra
  
  Extra chairs or stools: these need to be knocked over loudly, so they must be placed away from the musicians in such a way that they will not fall onto the musicians; 2-4 very cheap old violins and/or violas that can be smashed and destroyed (optional);
  
  Players' voices: the instrumentalists must be of both genders, as both male and females are required to scream and yell
• Programme Note

  This work begins with two authentic folk melodies from two (European) ethnic groups that, most recently in 2008, were engaged in armed violence. The similarity of the melodies, and the fact that layman cannot tell the two melodies apart, highlights the fact that ethnic hatred requires group-internal discourses to be nourished and exacerbated.

  Violence between two or more groups of people that see each other as ‘the others’, continues to shape the lives of millions of people globally.
  Composer Samuel Gray has first-hand experience of ethnic violence as an independent volunteer in Kosovo. While Gray realises that is impossible to represent the suffering and terror of war and its emotional and societal aftermath in music and does not wish to belittle such experiences through this work, he believes that in order for contemporary classical music to continue play a role in modern society, it needs to not ignore the problems that modern society has to deal with.

• Availability

  • Gray: Ethnic Conflict for String Ensemble; computer-set 

    Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
    
    $25.00
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  • Gray: Ethnic Conflict for String Ensemble; computer-set 

    Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
    
    $25.00
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  • Gray: Ethnic Conflict for String Ensemble; computer-set 

    Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
    
    $20.00
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    • Borrow

  • Samuel Gray: Ethnic Conflict for String Ensemble 

    Digital sound file - MP3