A humorous novelty piece for solo percussion ideally played using the Crow Contraption, invented by Brian Wiprud for this work and available for rental.
for solo percussion with crows / 8 min.
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Program Notes
For a concert devoted entirely to my music and sponsored by Greenwich House in New York in 2001, I wanted to include at least one touch of humor in a line-up of fairly serious pieces. I also wanted to represent my penchant for percussion music, without being able to present one of my percussion quartets. The obvious answer was Crow Magnum.
My brother, Brian Wiprud—an author, engineer, and offbeat inventor—readily agreed to create the substrate for something unusual. I requested the inclusion of crows, a leitmotif in his constructions. Soon he presented me with a contraption involving five ornate Asian metal cans, fixed on their side on a base, with four life-size crows towering above on lamp goosenecks, each crow outfitted with blinking red eyes (independently addressable) and each can with a brilliant light that would flash on its own rhythm.
The instrument and its lights dictated the piece to me (although it is playable with a simple set of cans with neither crows nor lights). At the time I was working with The Rite of Spring in high school classrooms, so this piece became rather a parody. I imagined an unruly flock of young crows assembling, dancing to the moon, receiving their revered elder and listening to his tales of the old days, and a final, frenzied dance of flashing claws.
—Theodore Wiprud
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