NOTE: An MP3 file, using Kontakt sounds, is available online at this site for listening.

"Lauda Primavera" is a textless, pantheistic hymn inspired by a sentimental journey back to one of the dearest of my childhood haunts, deep in the woodlands across the bay from Houston, near the tiny town of Wallisville. The core and point of origin of the piece is in the first violin part, measures 9b 13a. That passage is a duplication of a bird call (measures 9b 11a) and a mockingbird's comical ... (more)

NOTE: An MP3 file, using Kontakt sounds, is available online at this site for listening.

"Lauda Primavera" is a textless, pantheistic hymn inspired by a sentimental journey back to one of the dearest of my childhood haunts, deep in the woodlands across the bay from Houston, near the tiny town of Wallisville. The core and point of origin of the piece is in the first violin part, measures 9b 13a. That passage is a duplication of a bird call (measures 9b 11a) and a mockingbird's comical attempt to imitate it (11b 13a).
"Lauda Primavera" is scored to make use of the warm lower register of the violin and the singing capabilities of all the strings' middle registers. The piece also provides moderately advanced string students an enjoyable, yet challenging, opportunity to confront the issues of complex rhythmic patterns; direct and modified pattern recurrence; bowing, bow control, and bow budgeting; staying on a slow beat and subdividing the beat; and, for first violins, ornamentation, playing harmonics, and optional shifting and playing in position.
The opening of the poem at the top of the complete score is from the pen of one of my great-great grandfathers. It appeared in his _Thoughts in Verse_ (Kansas City: Ramsey, Millet, and Hudson, 1881).

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