Homage to Anonymous Ancient Fiddlers

Entertainment has been one of the most significant functions of music, and virtuosity is one of the keys to that.  One may recall some representative examples, such as Paganini and Liszt, but I believe there have been many more unknown heroes in music history.  As the title attempts to show, this piece is about the anonymous ancient fiddlers – their impressive skills and their endeavor to acquire them.  This piece has numerous virtuosic variations of a simple imaginary ancient melody.  To add more ‘ancient flavor’ and make the work more virtuosic, I incorporated composition techniques like hockets (distributed tune between multiple players), triple and quadruple stops, and detuning effect, all of which predate the Baroque period.    

Note: before playing the piece, violin 2 needs to be tuned slightly lower (about a quarter tone) than violin 1.  It should be done on the stage so that the audience can understand the out-of-tune effect is intended.  To do so, violin 1 should tune first and then play a note between G# and A – roughly a sixth tone below A would work the best.