20th Century Music for Wind Ensemble

Description

As happens in many other fields, also in the domain of wind music it is impossible to write the history of modern music without starting from, or at least discussing crucially, the music of Igor Stravinsky. The course of twentieth-century music changed forever after Stravinsky’s Rite, which took Europe by storm, enthused and enraged many musicians, critics, composers, and listeners, and substantially created a watershed, a time “before” and a time “after”.
Something in the same line, although on a different scale, also happened with his Concertino. Originally, this work had been conceived as a piece for string quartet (thus, for a dramatically different ensemble), written in 1920 and dedicated to the Flonzaley Quartet. The piece’s premiere took place in an inflamed atmosphere, as witnessed by a contemporaneous writer, Max Smith, who heard it at the Aeolian Hall of New York on November 23rd of the same year: “these sedate listeners actually burst out laughing in the brief pause before the final measures; and after all was over one faction tried to hush the applause with violent hissing, thus introducing a European custom for the first time into an American concert hall”. The piece was reproposed in Boston, at Jordan Hall, in early 1922; this time, the work met with a warm reception, probably also thanks to a laudatory article which had appeared the day before the concert. By breaking the ice before the performance, critic Warren Storey Smith effectively laid the foundations for a more informed listening. It is a piece which seemingly elicits perplexity due to its apparent incoherence and inconsistency, but in fact is very tightly woven. It consists, as Edward Cone put if, of “three phases of stratification, interlock, and synthesis”, and is based on the concept of dovetailing musical ideas which intersect with each other and provide stimuli for each other.
The piece is relatively short, and was restructured and substantially rewritten more than three decades after its premiere; in its version for winds, it was presented in Los Angeles in 1952. Writing the program notes for that concert, Stravinsky himself stated that his changed, new view of that early work had led him to shift the bars’ positioning, to redefine its harmonic structure, and to reshape the articulation and phrasing of several passages.
As the title implies, it is a one-movement, compact piece whose basic concept can be assimilated to a Sonata Allegro; however, as the term “concertino” suggests, there is also a virtuoso, soloistic dimension, culminating in a true cadenza originally written for solo violin. Stravinsky demonstrated here his mastery of innovative musical styles, which he had defined in some earlier works such as L’histoire du soldat and The Rake’s Progress; here, as in many other works by the emigrated Russian composer, there is a wealth of musical ideas, with considerable elan, much fun, a penchant for perpetuum mobile passages, a constant (and typically Russian) fascination for the grotesque, sardonic and histrionic, and plenty of references to Baroque music. It is however in the last section of the piece that Stravinsky proves prophetic, and seems to suggest and anticipate his forthcoming serial music, whereby “serial” also implies “serious”, at least by Stravinsky’s standards.
If Concertino is the Italian diminutive form of Concerto, so do Darius Milhaud’s Petites Symphonies stand with references to “true” symphonies. “Concerto” derives from concentus, playing together, and the same etymology (or a very similar one) can also be applied to “symphony”, deriving from “sounding together”. Still, both Concertos and Symphonies have long-established histories as musical genres in their own right, and generally a Symphony does not only imply the participation of several musicians, but also considerable length. This is entirely missing from Darius Milhaud’s project, which took form between 1917 and 1923. In those six years, Milhaud composed – at an average pace of one per year – a series of six “Petites symphonies”. Different from late-Romantic symphonies, which are scored for large symphonic orchestras whose players can exceed the number of 100, these are written for six to ten players (in one case, singers are also involved); and different from their eponymous forerunners, these pieces are not longer than six minutes, which is approximately one tenth (if not less!) than a typical late-Romantic Symphony. Milhaud was obviously sensitive to Stravinsky’s model and to his proposals, as is shown in the last movement of the Third Symphony, reminiscent – in turn – of L’histoire du soldat. The Fifth Symphony, recorded here and also known as Dixtuour d’instruments à vent, was written in 1922, and is a brilliant display of modernism. Its reference composer, one might say, is Edgar Varèse rather than Stravinsky, but it certainly aims at shocking, with a provocative, innovative language.
Written in Vienna and Warsaw, the piece consists of three movements; the outer ones are marked with French expression indications which can be translated as “rugged” and “violent”. Premiered in 1923 in Paris, at the Société Instrumentale à vent, it was dedicated to Marya Freund and immediately afterwards printed by Universal Edition, with whom the entire series of Milhaud’s short Symphonies would appear. The preceding piece in the series is the companion piece to the Fifth Symphony, being scored for ten string instruments. The overall concept of the series is clearly inspired by Neo-Classical values, but this Symphony is a standalone in terms of language. It is idiosyncratically chromatic and modern. The central movement “gives goosebumps”, as critic Paul Collaer put it, and – in his words – “The veiled woodwind harmony, like constricted breathing, is supported by long-held trills”. By its experimental characters, this Symphony reveals an unusual profile of Milhaud’s creativity, and suggests that his oeuvre might have evolved differently had he believed more forcefully in the promptings contained here.
At the time when these two works by Stravinsky and Milhaud had been composed, Vincent Persichetti was a child. Born in 1915 of an Italian father and a German mother, he was fascinated by music from his early childhood. He was a child-worker, in order to earn money for his music lessons; his talent attracted the attention of the founder of the Combs College of Music, where Persichetti’s early education took place. He was a polymath, who excelled not only in music, but also in the visual arts; he was highly interested in church music, probably also due to his early exposition to this field (he played the organ as one of the many sources of income which were needed in order to fund his studies).
His extraordinary talent and skill brought him soon to leading roles in the American musical scene; having studied at the Curtis Institute, his graduated and obtained a doctorate in Philadelphia, his city, and was soon given a post at The Juilliard School. Among his many students are some of the most interesting musicians of the generation after his own, including Rautavaara, Schickele (better known as “P. D. Q. Bach”), and Philip Glass. Persichetti’s experience as a pedagogue translates also in educational works. He was highly interested in music for winds, a domain in which he left many of his masterpieces; in particular, his Serenades are a kaleidoscopic collection of pieces for very different types of ensembles. The first of his Serenades dates from only slightly later than Milhaud’s and Stravinsky’s pieces; Persichetti, in spite of being their junior by many years, wrote it at the age of 14, and so not many years after their works. As a teenager, Persichetti was told which kind of music he was allowed to write, and he obtained the “right” of composing this recreational work as a reward for his exercises in strict counterpoint. Here, he reveals his early gift and penchant for polytonality, a style he would consistently use in his later years. The premiere, which took place at a concert for alumni of the Combs Conservatory, was certainly not the ideal setting for this youthful masterpiece: as Persichetti himself put it, “I managed to round up a violinist to play the flute part, a fine oboist, and a questionable tubist; the remaining seven parts I had to cover myself on a tracker organ. (I’d started organ at eleven, as soon as my legs were long enough to reach the pedals”.
The trumpet was instead the favourite instrument of Robert Nagel, who founded the New York Brass Quintet and who relentlessly promoted wind ensembles and wind music. His own performances include legendary concerts, such as L’histoire du soldat under the composer’s baton, and a Bach concert led by Pablo Casals. For the NYBQ, Nagel commissioned many works for brass quintet to numerous important composers, and he added his own touch to this beautiful repertoire. He taught at Yale, after having been a student of Persichetti himself. His publishing company, Mentor, became a reference point for brass players. His Divertimento, dating from 1951, is made of five movements with pronouncedly and markedly different styles, demonstrating the composer’s versatility, his full command of the complex art of writing for winds, and the variety of his musical ideas.
A particular interest for winds also marked the career of Michael Colgrass, born in Illinois from an Italian family. He was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in music in 1978, for a piece for quartet of percussions and orchestra (Déjà Vu, 1977, written for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra). He was a percussionist who served in the US Army as a player, and had been a student of Darius Milhaud – thus revealing one more hidden connection among the musicians featured in this Da Vinci Classics album. His Concertino for Timpani joins a wind ensemble with percussions, and showcases the solo timpanist’s talent and skills with a full palette of effects and demands. The musical language employed by the composer purposefully seeks to move the audience with dissonances and sombre tones. In 1953, when the piece was composed, its language was certainly not at the forefront of the avantgarde’s experiments; heard today, it fascinates with the variety of virtuoso styles it requires from the soloist.
Brent Heisinger, born in 1937 in California, began his musical activity as a pianist and trombonist, growing up in a very lively and culturally stimulating family. He became an appreciated trombonist and completed his education as a composer, and is a champion of polystylism. His March for Timpani and Brass is written for, and dedicated to, Bonnie Lynn Adelson, who at the time was a timpanist in California, and later became the first woman percussionist in Europe. As Heisinger reminisces, “When I composed the work, I was an elementary school instrumental teacher and thought that it would be effective to introduce parents and children to traditional instruments through performances by high school students who had gone through this elementary instrumental program. The composition begins in a modal setting (Phrygian), and makes use of fourths and fifths along with parallel triads in a fanfare, march-like setting that includes a timpani cadenza”.
Together, these works represent a fascinating itinerary into the world of wind music, also in combination with percussions.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024