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Matthew Gillott’s Onsra is an intricately woven tour de force for ten skilled players. The work’s title comes from the Boro language of India and refers to the loss of love. Gillott has expressed this concept through a rich palette of colors and textures as the piece moves through different moods.
The performing ensemble will need to operate at a high level of listening and balance awareness, as the entire work drives forward at a moderately quick tempo; yet there are plenty of musical hills and valleys achieved through clever orchestration and the manipulation of time.
Onsra ships as a fully bound score and includes individual parts in PDF format for either printing or tablet viewing.
Crotales (2 octaves)
Glockenspiel
Chimes
2 Vibraphones
2 Marimbas — (1) low A, (1) 5-octave
Drums — bongos, concert bass drum, 2 congas, djembe, 2 impact drums, 4 toms, snare drum
Cymbals & gongs — 2 China cymbals, hi-hat, ride cymbal, splash cymbal, 3 suspended cymbals, Zil-Bel (or equivalent), opera gong, Pasi gong (or other small gong), tam-tam
Accessories — ribbon crasher, shaker, shekere, tambourine, triangle, 2 woodblocks
When I initially glanced at the instrumentation for “Onsra,” my immediate impression was that this would be yet another predictable “concert percussion” adaptation of front ensemble writing, but I was only half-right. Many of the compositional techniques in “Onsra” do bear a strong resemblance to those used in marching percussion (such as homorhythmic permutation-based four-mallet writing, “split” ensemble moments, and orchestration that strongly suggests a “pit-and-battery” relationship between the pitched and unpitched percussion), and in this regard the piece is an extremely convenient option for large, advanced high school programs seeking challenging literature with a degree of familiarity. But this is by no means a predictable piece, and I was pleasantly surprised by many of the interesting and unexpected moments and sounds I encountered while listening to a recording.
According to composer Matthew Gillott’s notes, the title of this 5-minute work is taken from the Boro language (spoken in a northern region of India, which borders the Himalayan mountain region of China) and refers to “that bittersweet moment when you love for the last time or realize your love won’t continue.” The composer does a remarkable job of evoking Sino-Indian musical colors using only those instruments that might reasonably be found in a large American high school percussion program. Using actual Chinese toms or tabla would, of course, be wonderful, but the piece intelligently incorporates various gongs and tam tams, woodblocks, and hand drums to fill that space. I appreciate the composer’s occasional use of odd meters, Eastern harmony, and cyclic rhythmic development to prevent the piece from feeling too conventional. As I said before, this piece is anything but predictable!
I would happily recommend this piece to any advanced high school or college program looking for a large ensemble work that has one foot on the marching field and one foot in ethnomusicology. Some instrument substitutions may be necessary for smaller programs (such as using the bell of a cymbal in place of the Zil-Bel/ice bell or using an effect cymbal in place of the Pasi gong), and I personally would be interested in experimenting with Chinese toms instead of bongos and congas, but the piece will be interesting and engaging in any circumstance.
—Brian Graiser
Percussive Notes
Vol. 62, No. 2, August 2024
Matthew Gillott’s Onsra is an intricately woven tour de force for ten skilled players. The work’s title comes from the Boro language of India and refers to the loss of love. Gillott has expressed this concept through a rich palette of colors and textures as the piece moves through different moods.
The performing ensemble will need to operate at a high level of listening and balance awareness, as the entire work drives forward at a moderately quick tempo; yet there are plenty of musical hills and valleys achieved through clever orchestration and the manipulation of time.
Onsra ships as a fully bound score and includes individual parts in PDF format for either printing or tablet viewing.
Crotales (2 octaves)
Glockenspiel
Chimes
2 Vibraphones
2 Marimbas — (1) low A, (1) 5-octave
Drums — bongos, concert bass drum, 2 congas, djembe, 2 impact drums, 4 toms, snare drum
Cymbals & gongs — 2 China cymbals, hi-hat, ride cymbal, splash cymbal, 3 suspended cymbals, Zil-Bel (or equivalent), opera gong, Pasi gong (or other small gong), tam-tam
Accessories — ribbon crasher, shaker, shekere, tambourine, triangle, 2 woodblocks
When I initially glanced at the instrumentation for “Onsra,” my immediate impression was that this would be yet another predictable “concert percussion” adaptation of front ensemble writing, but I was only half-right. Many of the compositional techniques in “Onsra” do bear a strong resemblance to those used in marching percussion (such as homorhythmic permutation-based four-mallet writing, “split” ensemble moments, and orchestration that strongly suggests a “pit-and-battery” relationship between the pitched and unpitched percussion), and in this regard the piece is an extremely convenient option for large, advanced high school programs seeking challenging literature with a degree of familiarity. But this is by no means a predictable piece, and I was pleasantly surprised by many of the interesting and unexpected moments and sounds I encountered while listening to a recording.
According to composer Matthew Gillott’s notes, the title of this 5-minute work is taken from the Boro language (spoken in a northern region of India, which borders the Himalayan mountain region of China) and refers to “that bittersweet moment when you love for the last time or realize your love won’t continue.” The composer does a remarkable job of evoking Sino-Indian musical colors using only those instruments that might reasonably be found in a large American high school percussion program. Using actual Chinese toms or tabla would, of course, be wonderful, but the piece intelligently incorporates various gongs and tam tams, woodblocks, and hand drums to fill that space. I appreciate the composer’s occasional use of odd meters, Eastern harmony, and cyclic rhythmic development to prevent the piece from feeling too conventional. As I said before, this piece is anything but predictable!
I would happily recommend this piece to any advanced high school or college program looking for a large ensemble work that has one foot on the marching field and one foot in ethnomusicology. Some instrument substitutions may be necessary for smaller programs (such as using the bell of a cymbal in place of the Zil-Bel/ice bell or using an effect cymbal in place of the Pasi gong), and I personally would be interested in experimenting with Chinese toms instead of bongos and congas, but the piece will be interesting and engaging in any circumstance.
—Brian Graiser
Percussive Notes
Vol. 62, No. 2, August 2024
