Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump

based on the poem by David Bottoms

Andrew S. Allen

Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dumpby David Bottoms

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we rideto the dump in carloadsto turn out headlights across the wasted field,freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.

Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie stilllike dead beer cans.Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrowinto garbage, hide in old truck tires,rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of lighttoward the darkness at the edge of the dump.

It's the light they believe kills.We drink and load again, let them crawlfor all they're worth in the darkness we're headed for.

Performance Notes

Throughout the work, 4 different noteheads are employed to indicate to what degree the pitch:noise ratio inthe sound should be. It is up to the performers to decide how they will realize these sounds in the work. Theonly rule is that they produce the sounds solely from the indicated instrumentation. As a starting point, belowis an example chart of how these sounds could be realized by each performer:

mostly pitch half-pitched mostly noise entirely noise

soprano sing intone speak whisper

xylophone medium mallets strike the barshaft stickends scratch with mallets

bass (arco) ordinario (ord.) flautando sul pont. bow noise only

bass (pizz) ordinario (ord.) fingernail pizz. snap pizz to the side (n/a)

Soprano:The performer should use a deep southern accent, preferably not overdone, during spoken and intoning parts.one should favor elongated and nasal vowels and use a good deal of rubato and portamento in spoken passages.She may refer to the dialects assumed by actresses such as Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary-Louise Parker inFried Green Tomatoes or Daryl Hannah in Steel Magnolias.

Bass:The bass part throughout the score sounds one octave lower than written. All glissandos should last the entireduration of the last tied note that they begin from and should be exponential (glissando very little at first andthen increase the amount of the glissando more and more through the duration of the note.) If the bassist'stailpiece does not produce an audible sustained sound when bowed, he may bow the body of the instrumentinstead

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Extended Technique Explanation Xylophone

Two voices are notated on one staff (voiceI=stems up, voice II=stems down) and theirrespective dynamics are located above (I) andbelow (II) the staff. During contrapuntalpassages, the percussionist should attempt tokeep these lines as distinct from each other aspossible. The "Mallet's position" staff indicatesthe brightness, where top of the staff is verybright and bottom of the staff is very dull.

Program NotesBeing raised in a small southern town, I've always been intrigued by Southern literature, especiallyRealist/New-South works (Faulknerian and post-Faulknerian). Recently, I came across the work of DavidBottoms, a poet from Georgia whom I felt a great affinity for. This is first piece of a song cycle that will setseveral of Bottoms' poems. In this piece, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, I wanted to convey animmediate inert response to the lines of David Bottoms' poem. As if with ink brush calligraphy, I wanted toproduce musical gestures that reflected my state of mind at the precise moment of experiencing Bottoms'work. To this end, I created pen calligraphy and using computer software, was able to "trace" and transliteratemy reflexive calligraphy into notated musical gestures. The piece is completely permeated by heterophoniccounterpoint, which gives the piece the same sense of being that I interpreted from Bottoms' poem, that is asense of clear direction but not clear definition.

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Copyfight </©> 2009. All Rights to Produce, Practice and Perform are Given.

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Text taken from the poem of the same name by David Bottoms.Used with permission.

Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dumpfor soprano, xylophone and contrabass

Andrew S. Allen

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