Lullaby of Birth

Lullaby of Birth is a seven-minute trio for bağlama, cello and trombone, written in 2019 for Barış Aygün, Boran Mert and Mert Ünal and premiered by them in Samsun, on the Black Sea coast, that March.

A lullaby is the first music most of us hear, and it is sung at the hour when the difference between a person arriving and a person leaving is smallest. The piece takes the Anatolian lullaby — its narrow compass, its swaying long-short rhythm, the particular ornaments the bağlama gives a melody — as its material, and gives it to an impossible family: a folk lute, a cello, a trombone, three instruments that have no repertoire in common. Each plays the tune in its own way and at its own pace. The trombone is the slowest, breathing it in long, muted tones; the cello sings it with the wide vibrato of a Black Sea kemençe; the bağlama keeps the real thing going underneath, lightly, like someone humming while they work.

The three never fully agree, and that is the lullaby — a song sung to a child by several people who love it differently.