Actions and Sounds
An Introduction to «Cello Map»
Ellen Fallowfield
In this article Fallowfield discusses the current situation surrounding modern performance practice and introduces Cello Map, a handbook for cello technique she recently completed under the supervision of Erik Oña at the Hochschule für Musik Basel and the University of Birmingham, UK. Fallowfield identifies certain ideological and practical issues in the current literature as problematic. The handbook attempts to overcome these by defining a «global cello technique », within which every possible sound-modifying action is considered as a continuous scale. Within this system there are no special effects, rather a continuum of actions with a clear relationship to sound.
