April 7, 2002
2:30 p.m.
Dixon Gallery and Gardens
4339 Park Ave.
Memphis, TN
Johann Christian Bach, March on Horseback
This is not the famous Bach, Johann Sebastian, but rather one of his sons. Johann Christian Bach composed a number of occasion pieces for winds, including this one for the Queen of England. Bach was one of the first composers to include clarinets in wind bands, which in his time more typically used oboes or english horns and no clarinets in addition to the horns and bassoons.
Franz Schubert, Wind Octet in F, D. 72 (completed by R. G. Patterson)
Schubert left many compositions in disarray. This wind octet is an example. The piece was never published during his lifetime. The only sources are manuscripts dating from 1813, when Schubert was 16. The final two movements exist in an essentially complete form, but only a fragment of the opening movement exists, and there is no slow movement. One might call this the “Unbegun” Octet. Patterson has completed the opening movement based on Schubert's substantial fragment and composed a slow movement based on a “Shepherd Melody” for winds in Schubert's incidental music to Rosamunde.
This piece—especially the first movement—bears a strong affinity to Mozart’s Serenade in c minor. One wonders if young Schubert may have used Mozart’s piece as a model.
Claude Debussy, Children's Corner (trans. R. G. Patterson)
Debussy composed these six short piano pieces for his daughter over period of two years, and thousands of piano students have played them since then. Their simplicity and beauty have invited transcriptions. Indeed, Debussy himself authorized an orchestration by Andrè Caplet. This version is a sextet for two clarinets, two horns, and two bassoons.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade in c minor
This is arguably the best wind octet ever written, alternately lyrical and majestic. Mozart's publisher thought it was "too good" for winds, so he had Mozart transcribe an alternate version for string quintet (K. 406). Along with being in a minor key, a particularly striking and unusual feature is the Minuet. Minuets frequently provide a lighter element in the overall form of multi-movement works, but this one is an intricate set of canons. In the minuet proper, the bassoons play the same melody one bar behind the oboes. The trio weaves together two simultaneous canons where one oboe copies the other in mirror image offset by a bar and the two bassoons do the same (with different music).
Mozart was a genius orchestrator. Instead of writing music that was too good for winds, he wrote music that allowed winds to excel in the best Mozart.
Riverside
Wind Consort • 1794 Carr Avenue • Memphis, TN 38104 • 901-278-2699
• a 501(c)(3) organization