Rescriptio
for intercultural string orchestra

Rescriptio for intercultural string orchestra (2026)

Like a horticultural graft joining two distinct plants into one, Rescriptio (rewriting), for intercultural string orchestra, starts with the root material from an earlier piece, my erhu quartet Confluence (2021), and develops it in a new direction. It is scored for three erhus, three kamanchehs, three violins, three violas, two cellos and a contrabass.

The kamancheh is an instrument that shapes, colours, and extends the expression of melodies rooted in Persian vocal traditions. The erhu is similarly voice-like, drawing on Chinese tonal languages in which pitch contour carries meaning. The techniques of both instruments are closely intertwined with their cultural and linguistic contexts. 

On the erhu, the strings are not pressed against a fingerboard, but remain suspended, allowing the player to vary the pressure and produce highly flexible, sliding tones. Vibrato is similarly expansive, often oscillating above the pitch. By contrast, on Western string instruments vibrato is produced by rolling the finger against a stopped string, typically creating a narrower oscillation below the pitch. The erhu bow hair passes between the strings, permanently connecting bow and instrument, making techniques such as spiccato impractical. The four-stringed kamancheh is rotated from left to right on the player’s knee, while the bow remains at a fixed angle; on Western string instruments, the curvature is instead shaped by the bow. 

As in Confluence, Rescriptio makes extensive use of canons. Micro-canons introduce  slight temporal displacements between entries, while prolation canons present the same material at different speeds. The resulting textures resemble a delay-effect in rock music. A “flock effect” is created, like the murmuring of flocks of birds or schools of fish - individual identities are absorbed into collective motion. 

But what happens when instruments themselves carry fundamentally different rhetorical weight?

The flock whose members think they are synchronised, actually articulate that synchronicity differently. A gesture that is idiomatic on the violin may resist translation on the kamancheh or erhu. To balance the ensemble, violas and cellos often play in high positions or artificial harmonics, thinning their sound to blend with the erhus. Each canonic entry is therefore not only a time-shift, but a recontextualisation: the same line becomes a different gesture depending on who articulates it.

Rather than “many becoming one” as in Confluence, this piece explores many attempting to become one, and, in the process, revealing why they cannot fully do so.

Initially intended as an orchestration of Confluence, Rescriptio was commissioned by the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra (VICO) as part of the 2026 Global Soundscapes Festival at the Historic Theatre The Cultch in Vancouver, Canada. I decided to rewrite it into a new original composition. 

Edward Top