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Wind Quintet
2021
Bassoon
Clarinet
Flute
Horn
Oboe
- Program Notes
- In addition to being some of the most fun I've had as a performer, playing in wind quintets in college were times where I could feel myself growing the most as a musician. While writing this piece, I wanted to show how this genre is made up of five unique instrumental timbres that combine to form a collective sound that is completely distinct, not merely a sum of its parts. Each movement explores this concept from a different direction. The first movement holds up a prism to the ensemble sound to refract out the individual colors of the instruments. It begins with major 9th chords which are planed around the opening bass notes of Bartok's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (nothing is intended by this musical reference, it was just a random choice that worked out). This harmonic progression is subjected to a series of deconstructions, each time spinning off in a different direction but ultimately returning to the same material, almost like a rondo form. The second movement takes its inspiration from the fourth movement of Hindemith's wind quintet. In that piece, Hindemith gives each player a quasi-cadenza that portrays the instrument's character. I wanted to expand on this idea by creating a vignette for each instrument featuring a solo motif that the rest of the ensemble joins either through imitation or accompaniment. The bassoon starts with a syncopated minor 3rd motif; the horn follows with a fanfare based on the interval of a perfect 4th; the clarinet has an extended rhapsodic episode based on a perfect 5th; the oboe interjects with an elegant but slightly goofy motif based on a major 6th; the flute helps declaim the final section of the piece with a minor 7th motif, wherein the players combine gestures made up of their respective intervals. Although each instrument retains its own musical identity, the sense of a unified ensemble returns and the piece ends with a cheeky unison, in somewhat of a nod to the ending of Schoenberg's wind quintet.
- Recording Notes
- Dorico playback with NotePerformer
- External Links