November 8, 2002
8:00 p.m.
St. Mary's Episcopal
Cathedral
692 Poplar Ave.
Memphis, TN
Robert Schumann, Romanze, Op. 28, No. 3 (trans. R. G. Patterson)
Schumann was often at his best with short forms, especially for piano. This third and final of his Romanzen for piano presents a delightful tableaux of outward strutting and inward yearning. The frame is a pompous march that virtually shouts for a wind-setting and prompted this transcription. Between iterations of the march are two intermezzi of strikingly different character. One is wispy, fluttery, and tumultuous, like breathless desire. The other is a passionate melodic outpouring that is displaced and disturbed because the composer has shifted it entirely off the beat. After a final iteration of the march, the piece ends quietly and solemnly.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Octet in E-flat, Op. 103
Despite its relatively high opus number, Beethoven's Octet for winds is an early work. Beethoven wrote all of his wind music while he was still in Bonn, the city of his childhood. At that time it was fashionable among noblemen of central Europe to retain for their table-music an octet consisting of paired oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons. Beethoven almost certainly wrote this piece for the wind players employed by the Elector of Cologne, who lived at Bonn.
Beethoven himself never attempted to publish the octet. In 1796, he substantially rewrote it, using a number of new themes, and published it as the quintet for strings, op. 4. The utterly misleading opus number, 103, was assigned by late nineteenth-century editors at Breitkopf & Härtel for reasons that are lost in the mists of time.
Beethoven's octet (along with the two big serenades by Mozart) has emerged as one of the three most important works of the genre. Despite its early composition date (when Beethoven was in his early twenties), it shows many earmarks of the later master. Of particular interest is the Menuetto. Even at this early date, Beethoven was already re-inventing the minuet as the scherzo. It starkly foreshadows the even more radical innovations that would come in his symphonies. Other signature features are abrupt dynamic shifts, spiky sforzandos, and development by means of fragmentation. Beethoven exploited the color of the winds to the fullest, and while the piece may not be as weighty as some of his later works, it displays all the wit and sparkle of his best compositions.
Johannes Brahms, Sextet in B-flat Major, Op. 18 (trans. R. G. Patterson)
This sextet is the first of two that Brahms composed for pairs of violins, violas, and cellos. The influences that prompted the wind transcription were numerous and varied: the paired scoring of the original (which echoes the paired scoring of a wind octet), the desire for a great work of Brahms in wind octet form, the fact that the slow movement of this sextet is itself a transcription by Brahms of an earlier piano work.
Brahms felt a strong affinity with his predecessors, especially Mozart and Beethoven. One can only guess how familiar he might have been with their wind music. Perhaps the closest he came to composing such music himself is his orchestral Serenades, the first of which started out as a nonet for mixed winds and strings, and the second of which lacks violins.
Patterson believes that a transcription is only worth making if the music being transcribed is of the highest quality. Furthermore, a transcription should be plausible as having been written by the original composer. Many of the choices of register and instrumentation are prompted by careful readings of Brahms's writing for winds in both orchestral and chamber music settings. Given that composers often transcribed their works for different ensembles, one hopes that Brahms might enjoy this version of his sextet.
Riverside
Wind Consort • 1794 Carr Avenue • Memphis, TN 38104 • 901-278-2699
• a 501(c)(3) organization