Okay, this piece is in a minor key (I’m sorry I can’t remeber wgich) and consist of two parts: a low and very menacing string section playing variations on the same phrase and a boy soprano singing a single long drawn out note.
It must be quite a famous piece as I’ve heard it many times on TV and in radio plays, used to invoke a menacing mood.
So, can anyone help me?
I’m sorry, but you simply must get more descriptive, otherwise I can’t even begin to guess what it sounds like. Can you at least describe that repeated phrase? You can also try putting the phrase in Parsons code and search for it at MelodyHound. (Parsons code is explained on the site)
Unfortunately, I can’t whistle but it’s a very haunting piece of music and the string section is very distinctive. The fact that the boy soprano only sings a single tone throughout the song should give someone a clue.
Can you think of a specific tv show you’ve heard it in?
Um, the boy soprano thing rings a bell. You don’t see 'em too often in solo parts.
Possibly George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children, from 1970?
It’s a song cycle based on texts of Federico Garcia Lorca, written for mezzo-soprano, boy soprano, and chamber orchestra (which includes toy piano, mandolin, musical saw, Tibetan prayer stones, and Japanese temple bells).
I’ll bet it is on the soundtrack for Fearless.
It is the 3rd symphony by Gorecki.
Though I have head the soprano be a woman.
The string part is remincient of the famous Adagio for Strings (Barber) it starts with a single bass playing the motive. The sound is ‘climbing’. Really almost atonal but it climbs in register and volumn till suddenly it cuts the solo voice then it comes back to the strings in this incredible wave of sound then it winds back down to the single bass.
If that’s not the piece then you should listen to this one.
There are several recordings of Gorecki’s third.
It’s a stunningly beautiful work, written in memoriam for those who died in WW2. I recommend it gushingly fwiw.
The most popular version by far features Dawn Upshaw.
Hard to confuse her voice with a boy’s though.
/shrug
I’ve managed to hear some of Goreckis 3rd the strings certainly sound very, very simlair to what I’m thinking of anyone know which movement this part would be in?
Unfortunately, the only source i remebr defintely hearing it, is an obscure series of radio plays - Terminus (hooror stories with a railway theme) by Nick Fisher, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1994.