Degu Sounds
for solo piano

Works nos. 52, 53, and 64–66
2015

Five piano pieces based on vocalizations of the common degu (Octodon degus), a Chilean rodent. The music serves simultaneously as an extended transcription of the sounds themselves, as program music depicting situations in which the given vocalizations may be used, and as a description of, and a feeling for, the motivation behind the original vocalizations.

I am indebted to British researcher Chloe Long, without whose website Degutopia not only these pieces would not exist, but we would not be able to keep our degus in the first place. I've adopted her numbering scheme for degu vocalisations I used, and each piece is subtitled with a bit of text from her descriptions of the corresponding sounds.