Nanourisma is a Greek word that means lullaby. The main melody is from a popular traditional Greek lullaby that I first heard and learnt from a recording called Tragoudia Kai Skopoi Makedonias, released by Lyra, with Xanthippi Karathanasi singing.

This piece is written for a treble recorder and tuned percussion. The top line of the melody part is played with a treble and the line underneath is sung simultaneously by the recorder player. I have performed it with a baroque treble recorder and a medieval alto in F. It depends on what you have available to you and what works best. If the sung range doesn’t suit you, you could always transpose the piece lower and try it on a tenor or voice flute, for example. If you do this, you will need to find appropriately pitched percussion. If you can’t find a percussionist, this piece also works well as a solo.

The percussion part calls for a small gong in C, a gong in F, a temple bell in G, a large gong in C, and bells tuned roughly between G and D. The bells are played gently and intermittently throughout the piece. The percussionist can hold these in one hand whilst playing the other instruments with the other hand throughout the entire piece. The temple bowl is simply struck in this piece. In general the gongs are struck fairly gently to blend with the dynamic of the recorder and for a stable pitch. The piece is quite rhythmically free. The percussionist needs to follow the melody line to play the notes exactly where they are placed on the score with the recorder player.

I have performed this piece with percussionist Tony Lewis, the instruments we used were what he had available, and this dictated the percussion line. You can hear us playing this on the CD Transience : contemporary modal music (Orpheus Music OM602). We use a small gong in ‘C’, a Korean gong in ‘F’, a Nepalese Temple bell (singing bowl) in ‘G’, a large gong in ‘C’, and two small Indonesian cowbells tuned at ‘G’ and ‘D’. I don’t expect the percussionist to be able to find these exact instruments, simply similar ones tuned to the same pitches. It is sometimes difficult to find a particular pitch on a gong or temple bell; for example, the temple bell that we used has a lower very strong fundamental of ‘F’, a strong note of ‘C’, and then a ‘G’ above that. They all sound very clearly together and there are many more notes in it that can be brought out more or less depending on how it is struck. Please make your own aesthetic judgement with instruments that you think sound best with the piece. For example, gongs with a very clear ‘G’ would probably work even better than the ones I have used in ‘C’.

It is best if the sung tones are as close in intonation to the recorder as possible; this imparts a better blend and harmonics between the two parts. The diminuendos are achieved in tune with the voice by slowly uncovering a small portion of the thumb-hole to maintain tuning.