FANATIC

• scherzo for violin or cello, and piano

• completed 2010, rev. 2025

• 10 minutes

• Inquire directly about purchasing a score and part

  • $20.00 US, score and part 

PROGRAM NOTE

Originally composed for violin and piano, Fanatic was commissioned for violinist Alicia Choi in 2010. I wrote this brutal scherzo as the Tea Party movement swept across the United States—including my native Kentucky—stirring in me anxiety about increasingly radical tribal politics. The piece is my response: raw and rough. It channels the primitivist energy of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps and adds just a touch of Bluegrass in reference to my home state. [Proudly, my home county is home to the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum and is the birthplace of Bill Monroe, the father of Bluegrass.]

In 2025, I revised and transcribed the work for cello and piano, as concerns surfaced yet again, now for the third time in recent memory. Call me ignorantly biased, but current left-wing political movements do not stoke in me the same alarm as those surging today. Unfortunately, the music feels just as urgent today—and more so—than it did fifteen years ago. I am not so presumptuous as to assume this piece can change minds, but it does attempt to highlight a highly troubling cultural and political trend. I find the present moment, particularly what is occurring in downtown Los Angeles in June of 2025, more alarming than any I have lived through.

The version for cello and piano is dedicated to Dave Eggar and Amir Farid, who premiered it in June 2025 as part of the Mostly Modern Festival.

-Stephen Cabell