Works/Winds & Brass

When my dear friend Katherine Fink approached me about commissioning a flute sonata, I thought, what do I know about the flute…I play the violin! But with her assistance to keep things un-impossible, I decided to follow the adage given to all creative artists: write what you know. So back home I went—at least in my mind’s ear.

There’s a very small village—Highlandville IA, population 35—nearby my hometown. On Saturday nights, the old two-room schoolhouse is the setting for folk dancing, the Highlandville Dance. In the Introduction of the movement, I imagined nightfall. Then the dance begins: misremembered jigs with faltering steps and elegant waltzes.

The second movement, Birdcalling, arose from my mother asking me to find out what bird was singing in our neighborhood. A good friend of mine who works for the Audubon Society told me it was a chickadee. He further told me that chickadees have regional variations to their song. I decided to incorporate these variations alongside lyrical melodies. The bird gets very excited preceding the opening calm of the movement.

In Circus Music I took inspiration from a fife (flute) in a circus band. I always loved the way a musical idea can be transformed into entirely different moods. Just as a circus clown confuses another with disguises, melodies from Highlandville Dance return with different rhythms and harmonies. Taking the traditional rondo form, I develop the rondo theme so each recurrence gains velocity. A quiet calm with a return of the very opening Introduction and the chickadee’s birdsong precedes a final burst of energy—like a clown shot from a cannon.

Sonatina for flute (piccolo, penny whistle), oboe (English horn), and clarinet (bass clarinet)

The wind trio presents two main challenges: there can only be three pitches sounding at any time and it has an almost entirely treble range. Unless you also double with bass clarinet. I did. But for a thicker harmonic language than three pitches normally allow, I used illusion. The piece begins with Scamper, a miniature arch form as sonata form with a shift in register from low to high through the movement. The two main themes contrast by texture. The first is a melody in the oboe accompanied by surrounding arpeggiation. The second, imitation between the instruments, hints at a fugue. (I still love a fugue.) Lullaby is a true illusion of rich, lush harmonies with only three voices. Here it is the English horn that sings while the two other instruments create lush harmonies. Trifle is a rhythmic play on the traditional rondo. I adore rondos (a form that has a refrain) and I love reinvention of ideas. Each time the theme returns it is transformed rhythmically. The second episode—the music between refrains—recalls music from the previous movements. A tiny flurry provides the coda.

4 in Motion is one of my earliest works still allowed out to be heard (youth and inexperience being what it is), because it displays a fierce rhythmic style I continue to use. The piece was written for friends performing at the 1993 International Double Reed Convention. Parody March is a theme and variations, a form I rarely use. Making the form more interesting, I designed the four variations so that the final variation combines the previous three. Haunted Echoes is based on one chord: the minor/major seventh—the eerie, horror movie chord. Heard both as a chord and linearly as melodies, this sonority also goes through wild tempo fluctuations (slow and fast) and textures (thin and thick). The final movement, Perpetuum Mobile, is an explosion of virtuosity: speed; conflicting harmonic worlds; rhythmic play shifting the beat; and two fugues—remember that fugue means flight—all giving the listener notice that the piece is dashing to its end!

Written in 1995

Commissioned by Wil Dietz for his performance at the International Double Reed Society’s convention in Tallahassee FL in 1996—because he loved the piece of mine he’d heard at the 1993 Convention (4 in Motion, for flute, clarinet, oboe, and piano)

I fell in love with the bassoon when I heard its solo in Scheherazade and played (I’m a violinist) Haydn’s Symphonie Concertante for violin, cello, oboe, and bassoon when I was 14.

I decided to exploit two of its features: lyricism and buffoonery—also its renaissance/medieval roots—a much honkier comical sound—like the oboe’s predecessor the shawm)—thus the antiquated misspellings of the piece and its movements.

The title describes the look of the bassoon (tawny—yellowish brown, as some bassoons are) and its LONG throat singing ayres (or airs…a term for English songs of the Renaissance).

The lyric outer movements surround the scherzo-like Frolick—which has the cadenza that ends on the bassoon’s lowest note—over which the strings play serenely (the bassoon is up to comic tricks…) before all return to joking around.

The last movement is misremembered Palestrinian counterpoint, some rules followed but then broken, using a stolen Kyrie chant.

Trained as a string player, I found writing chamber music for winds a challenge to the imagination. But rather than focusing on their limitations with respect to strings, I chose to focus on their special possibilities—especially kaleidoscopic color. Each of the movements explores this: through various combinations of the instruments, from pairings and trios to the full orchestration of all five; shifting melodic-accompaniment materials from one instrument to another, to create an undulating background; and to the use of special techniques and the inherent qualities of each instrument, such as flutter-tongue and extreme ranges. Three titles of the movements evoke childhood (Five at Play; Hop, Skip, Jump; and Catch Me If You Can) and surround the two that evoke the natural world (Rapid Winds, Flowing Waters and Twilight Mists). I often take my inspiration from the unbridled imagination of childhood, a world in which the real and the unreal have indistinct boundaries, and from the quiet noisiness of nature, an interesting paradox when compared to our modern society’s loud noisiness. The Borealis Wind Quintet commissioned the piece.