Winds on Wednesdays: Roussel, Stravinsky, Blake, Bozza, Brant, & Mozart

Albert Roussel | Fanfare for a Pagan Coronation (1921)

English critic and composer Leigh Henry (1889-1958) maintained a keen and sympathetic interest in Roussel. He was, for instance, one of the very few critics to grasp what Roussel was about in his pivotal Second Symphony, completed in 1921. In that year he inaugurated Fanfare: A Musical Causerie, a short-lived magazine which only lasted for seven issues.  In its initial October number, he published Roussel's Fanfare pour un sacre païen (Fanfare for a Pagan Coronation) in its original scoring for four trumpets and kettledrums. Lasting about one minute, Fanfare pour un sacre païen is understated, anticipating the primitivism and sardonic outlook of Roussel's later period. For Roussel's 60th birthday, La Revue Musicale devoted an entire issue to him in which Fanfare pour un sacre païen was heard for the first time in its revised scoring, which added four horns.            

– Luke Camarillo

Personnel

Trumpet
Charlie Jones
Grant Knippa
Sarah Heimberg
Liu Qiyun
Jon-Michael Taylor
Cody York

Percussion
Taylor Lents

Igor Stravinsky | Excerpt from "Suite from L'Histoire du soldat"

II. Airs by the Stream
VIII. The Devil's Dance

Despite his artistic achievements with the Firebird (1910), Petroushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913), 1919 found Stravinsky stranded in Switzerland in dire financial straits. World War I had made a shambles of Europe, sapping any hope for staging large concerts or obtaining new commissions.  The Russian Revolution cut Stravinsky off from his family fortune as well as ongoing royalty payments. Rising to the occasion, Stravinsky and his writer friend Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz schemed a new work to be “narrated, performed, and danced” by a small troupe that could easily be mounted at modest cost in smaller, makeshift venues. The scenario was a Faustian tale derived from Alexander Afanasiev’s collection of Russian folk tales: a soldier returning home from the front with a magic violin which he foolishly trades with the devil for a book promising great riches.  
        While a chamber septet suggests a profound contrast to Stravinsky’s large orchestral scores, his musical personality remains intact. The very first bars of the opening march reveal some of Stravinsky’s chief compositional traits: bitonality, rhythmic disruption, dislocation, and asymmetry; as well as the prevalent diversity of short motifs repeated in layered ostinatos of shimmering stasis. The intimate “Petit Airs Au Bord du Ruisseau” (Airs by the Stream) showcases the violin as both the central musical and narrative object of the piece. In the Royal March, with its swirling trumpet quintuplets and pompous melody, Stravinsky creates a freer structure that represents the Soldier’s newfound freedom within the Faustian story. The suite ends before the original work’s ultimate dark denouement. Here, the soldier, still in possession of his violin, performs the “Danse du Diable” (The Devil's Dance) that torments the devil into contortions and physical collapse, a temporary victory for the soul.   

– Luke Camarillo

Personnel

Clarinet
Theodore Robinson

Bassoon
Jazmyn Barajas-Trujillo

Trumpet
Ryan O’Connell

Trombone
Jackson Bert

Percussion
Felix Ko

Violin
Natalie Boberg

Bass
Gregory Padilla

Howard Blake | from Sinfonietta

II. Andante serioso

Sinfonietta for Brass was commission by BBC radio producer Jim Parr for the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, the prominent British brass ensemble primarily active in the 1980s and 90s. The sinfonietta opens with a stately rhythmic introduction reminiscent of a classical French overture, followed by variations moving through five stylistically contrasting sections before returning to the opening statement. The second movement features the flugelhorn as a lyrical soloist soaring above the ensemble, akin to a traditional da capo aria. The third movement is all perpetual energetic, propelling forward with short rhythms at a fast tempo; the ensemble is split into two choirs playing in call-and-response canons. 

Howard David Blake is an English composer from Brighton, East Sussex. His compositional career has spanned over half a century, writing primarily for film and television. Blake began his formal music training at a young age as a pianist and singer and at 18 won the Hastings Musical Festival Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. Blake’s film arranging and composing career has led him to collaborate with many famous musicians, including the group Queen. Blake is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and received the Order of the British Empire for his services to music.                                                                    

– Nicolás Ayala Cerón

Personnel

French horn
Helen Wargelin

Trumpet
Cameron Abtahi
Kimberly Sabio
Ryan O’Connell
Charles Jones

Trombone
Katherine Franke
Matthew Vezey
Elias Canales

Bass Trombone
Luke Sieve

Tuba
James Curto

Eugène Bozza | from Duo for Flute and Oboe

II. Allegretto
III. Allegro

Henry Brant | from Ghosts and Gargoyles (2001)

IX.     Zoe Cagan, solo piccolo
X.     Hui Lam Mak, solo flute

In 1939 Henry Brant composed a flute ensemble piece titled Angels and Devils  – before there were flute ensemble pieces.  It is a large work for thirteen flutes and is a classic of the genre and in the canon of modernism.
        Brant was one of the 20th century musicians who was as much an innovator in music as a composer.  His passion was for exploring how sound came to the listener.  As with Giovanni Gabrieli, whose cori spezzati (spaced choirs) exploited the cavernous spaces of St Mark’s in Venice, Brant wanted to exploit the spaces in which music was heard.  To do so he would space apart players within venues, creating varied perspectives for the listener.
        Brant’s 2001 mini-masterwork, Ghosts and Gargoyles for 9 flutes, is the book end to Angels and Devils. In ten short movements, Brant asks his players to be placed about the hall in groups of two. He then has them play as antiphonal ghosts in various styles: jazz and bebop, collages of motives, unison gestures of bells or the blowing of wind. 
        The piece was intended to have one soloist plus octet.  The soloist would play piccolo and the standard C and bass flutes.  We have chosen to award those to different soloists in the ensemble.  The piece is to end with one soloist walking offstage. We will simply end in a darkening twilight of the ghosts.          

– Charles Peltz

Personnel

Flute
Elena Rubin
Hyo Jin Park
Yeyoung Moon
Javier Castro

Piccolo
Zoe Cagan
Javier Castro
YeYoung Moon

Alto Flute
Hui Lam Mak
Clara Lee
Elena Rubin

Bass Flute
Chase McClung
Nnamdi Odita-Honnah

Jazz Percussion
Gavin Connolly, guest artist

W. A. Mozart | Excerpt from "Suite from The Magic Flute"

IV.  Hm! hm! hm!

Eighteenth-century Europe saw the rise of a monied elite who, in an attempt to further their social standing, hired musicians to accompany their meals, soirées, and large social events. The wind octet proved to be a perfect ensemble for this purpose. Dubbed the Harmonie, these musicians (two oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons) played reductions of famous operas, symphonies, and folk tunes for their well-to-do patrons. Many of the best arrangements were created by the composer of the original work. In July of 1782, Mozart wrote this note to his father: “I am up to my eyes in work, but next Sunday I have to arrange my opera (Abduction from the Seraglio) for wind instruments. If I don't, someone will get to it before I do and reap the profits. You have no idea how difficult it is to arrange a work of this kind for wind instruments, so that it suits these instruments and yet loses none of its effect."
        In an effort to capture the spirit of the opera, Joseph Heidenreich wrote this harmonie version of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)with an ear to both the charm of the score and the sumptuous legato required of Mozart’s singers. In every number except the overture, the solo oboe and clarinet reflect the timbre and expressive quality of Mozart’s original vocal vision. In keeping with the technical limitations of the instruments of Heidenreich’s time, the development within the Overture is removed to avoid any key change that would not have been possible. In order to cover for essential string parts, the horns are often called to play dolcissimo in their most difficult, clarino register. The illusion of a complete orchestra is rounded out by the bassoons who drive the harmonic and rhythmic movement of the overture, group numbers, and arias.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Holy Roman Empire on January 27, 1756 and, after a prodigious performing and composing career, died on December 5, 1791 only two months before his 36th birthday. He began work on Die Zauberflöte in 1789 with the help of librettist and baritone Emanuel Schikaneder. Schikaneder would later sing the role of Papageno at the opera’s premiere at Vienna’s Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden on September 30, 1791. This arrangement for winds was written by composer and oboist Joseph Heidenreich (1753-1821).               

– Riley Vogel

Personnel

Oboe
Coleton Morgan
Corinne Foley

Clarinet
Fanghao Xiang
Luke Camarillo

Bassoon
Julien Rollins
Evan Judson

French horn
Jonathan McGarry
Xiang Li