Egba Musical Totem for String Quartet

This piece is based on a popular Yoruba song, "Lori oke ati petele. . . Mayo, mayo, mayo o, l'ori Olumo" (On the hill and on the plain. . . Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice on Olumo Rock). The song belongs to the Egba people from Abeokuta in Ogun State of southwest Nigeria. In this piece, I arranged the melodic tune for a string quartet using various compositional devices including counterpoint, homophony, canonic imitation, fugal technique, dance rhythms, and free formal structure. In other to bring the composition closer to its cultural roots, I employed the five-tone pentatonic scale for the entire piece as found in most of Nigerian folk songs. There are dramatic and playful sections with abrupt silences and dialogue between the voices. It opens gently, moderately soft, but climaxed into a bravura of fast moving sixteenth notes that triumphantly heralded the abridged final appearance of the main principal theme with fff in the last five measures.