duo for violin and percussion with eggshells, down feathers and table-tennis balls

Commissioned by Mads Bendsen and first performed by Morten Ryelund Sørensen (violin) and Mads Bendsen (percussion) at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark, on 3 October 1999.
The piece requires focussed lighting.
The title comes from a text by mystic poet Rumi, and the ideas for the piece—the eggshells and feathers combined with at times relatively harsh sounds—arose while I was reading visual artist Bill Viola’s sketchbooks for his early works, in which he thematises dualities such as birth/death and the inner/outer self.

Juliana Hodkinson

Why linger you trembling in your shell?, asks Juliana Hodkinson in her duo for violin and percussion. The work was composed during a residency at Kongegården Centre for the Visual Arts and Music, in Korsør, Denmark. Hodkinson has been much inspired by Danish music. But she has given back at least as much: her strong personality, her music, and her thoughts have played an important role for many of the youngest composers today. In her music, she turns her attention towards music’s context. Music is not just what is heard, but all that happens when people are brought into a particular situation. What happens when we play, and when we listen?
In Why linger you trembling in your shell? the instruments include eggshells, and the musicians at times have to follow the rhythm of a bouncing table-tennis ball. Unpredictability and fragility.

Peter Bruun