Vicious Children
2014 (09:00)
Text by Wally Gunn, after Mother Goose
Percussion quartet
Written for Mobius Percussion

Video: Vicious Children by Wally Gunn, performed by Mobius Percussion, 2014. An Evan Chapman film.

Program Notes
The schoolyard and the playground can be places of savagery, where each child must nervously navigate the shifting alliances, the ruthless and cruel scheming, and sometimes the unjustified violence of their fellows. It’s not clear whether these behaviours are learned from grown-ups, or whether they are innate. In any case, they are ubiquitous, and no child escapes them. Vicious Children recalls this struggle with a musical and theatrical narrative of brittle stick clicks and driving drumming, dreamscapes of meditative bells, and grim, sinister nursery rhymes whispered, sung and shouted. The piece was composed for Mobius Percussion.
– WG, 2014

Instrumentation

Percussion 1
Voice (whispering, voiced and unvoiced, singing and shouting)
Almglocken, F4
Snare drum, snares off
Floor or low tom tuned to a note in D natural minor
Timpani mallets

Percussion 2
Voice (whispering, voiced and unvoiced, singing and shouting)
Almglocken, E4
Snare drum, snares off
Floor or low tom tuned to a note in D natural minor
Timpani mallets 

Percussion 3
Voice (whispering, voiced and unvoiced, singing and shouting)
Almglocken, D4
Snare drum, snares off
Floor or low tom tuned to a note in D natural minor
Timpani mallets

Percussion 4
Voice (whispering, voiced and unvoiced, singing and shouting)
Almglocken, C4
Snare drum, snares off
Floor or low tom tuned to a note in D natural minor
Timpani mallets

Mobius Percussion
David Degge
Mika Godbole
Yumi Tamashiro
Frank Tyl
mobiuspercussion.com

Vicious Children . Long Echo Music catalog 002 / Wally Gunn catalog 115 . Copyright © Wally Gunn . June 2014

Long Echo Music (BMI)
longechomusic.com