David Ernest Mc Carthy
Prelude For A Genocide
Short instrumentation: 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0, str
Duration: 5'
Instrumentation details:
violin I (4 players)
violin II (4 players)
viola (4 players)
violoncello (3 players)
double bass (2 players)
Prelude For A Genocide
Printed/Digital
Translation, reprints and more
David Ernest Mc Carthy
Prelude For A Genocide
Available digitally
Type: Dirigierpartitur
Sample pages
Audio preview
Work introduction
Influenced by "Threnody To The Victims Of Hiroshima" (Penderecki), "Black Angels" (George Crumb), and "Different Trains" (Steve Reich), "PRELUDE" tells the story of the Gaza genocide. It borrows from the idea of Reich to imitate the sound of Holocaust trains with the string quartet - but in "Prelude" (for string orchestra), you will hear a representation of the sounds of war as heard and experienced by the Palestinian civilians. It uses two "motifs" to achieve this - the first is a "drone sound", which is present throughout: the string instruments copy the sound that a drone makes, just the same way the people in Gaza hear the sound of drones 24 hours a day. The second "motif" is a copy of the "baby crying" drone that was used in Gaza, a quadcopter that played the sound of a baby crying on loudspeakers, to lure people who might come to help, and then attack them. The sound of the string orchestra imitates the baby crying sound in a sweet way, with a disturbing dissonant undertone.