This work requires additional technological components and/or amplification.
Abbreviations (PDF)
Boosey & Hawkes
Fits + Starts was commissioned by the Los Angeles-based Hysterica Dance Company. The original tape version was premiered with Hysterica Dance Company at the DUMBO Dance Festival, New York in 2003, and the live version was premiered by cellist Benjamin Elton Capps at Greenfield Hall, New York in 2004. Fits + Starts has been widely performed at a range of venues including Housing Works in SoHO New York where Capps performed the work at an afternoon musical salon curated by Björk.
The tape part for Fits + Starts comprises acoustic recordings of harpsichord, cello, and viola, which have been layered, manipulated and transformed to create a backdrop for the solo cellist.
In 2012, Tzadik Records released a full album of my music, titled Blue Moth, that showcases a diverse range of electroacoustic chamber music, including Fits + Starts.
— Anna Clyne
Reproduction Rights:
This program note may be reproduced free of charge in concert programs with a credit to the composer.
“Fits + Starts is another Clyne winner—distinctive and bracingly modern yet with elements that seem to conjure up the distant musical past … Sharply rhythmic music for the live and pre-taped cello mingle with a jangly harpsichord and other electronic sounds, the work coalescing in a soaring lyrical melody for cello that provides a sense of culmination without over-sugaring the soup.” —Chicago Classical Review