Bee Dances (score & parts) - 2BSN (PDF)

Bee Dances  - PDF

for two bassoons

by Thomas Dempster

This is the PDF download.  To purchase the printed music, click HERE.

Bee Dances was composed in April and May of 2015, relatively on the heels of my early-2015 work invertebrate counterpoint for piano. That work deals with five kinds of insects (and spiders), and while in a still-buggy kind of mood, I was struck by the methodical (if dizzying) dances that honeybees do in order to communicate with members of their hive. The most common form of bee dance, the waggle dance, signifies the distance and direction to reliable food sources, and is a learned (if disputed) language. While in the hive, a bee walks a straightline distance while “waggling” violently back and forth (the length of the short walk signifies distance), then makes an abrupt turn in (if we look down on the scene) either an upward or downward direction, following an arc back to its starting point to repeat the message. In the hive, other bees learn and share the news, all at the service of a thriving hive and providing the Queen Bee with all she requires.
            All three movements are played as one span. The first movement, “Waggle Dance,” is my reproduction (of sorts) of a waggle dance, represented by short motivic arcs and buzzy trills and tremolos. The bassoons imitate each other, as though learning each other’s language. The dance gives way to the noisy, almost static din of the hive in “The Hive,” with multiphonics and short, quasi-improvisatory figures reflecting the ordered chaos and constant activity of the hive. In “Queen Bee Dance” I attempt to show the regal treatment the Queen receives with a stately melody with contrapuntal treatment, as though she is on a processional through the hive.
            Each movement is vaguely inspired by a Baroque dance: “Waggle Dance” takes its cue from a gigue; “The Hive” from a sarabande, rather loosely; and “Queen Bee Dance” from a passepied. As the modern bassoon fingering system is the German system, and the discoverer of the waggle dance an Austrian, the harmonic scheme of the work uses the German spelling of BEES (or, B-E-Es) – B-flat, E, and E-flat, from one movement to the next.

First performed: Cortona, Italy, 10 July 2015, Daniel Beilman and Grant Bingham, bassoons