Dr. Timothy Reynish
Formerly Head of School of Wind & Percussion and Director of Wind Ensemble, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester
Paper presented at CBDNA Conference
SIGNIFICANT WIND ENSEMBLE WORKS FROM EUROPE
IN THE LAST SEVENTEEN YEARS, 2000-2017
Thursday, March 16, 11:15 to 12:00
THE WORLD VIEW
If you were the conductor or manager of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and were charged with putting together a series of programs of music since 1950, you would probably look first at the American contribution of Copland, Bernstein, Schuman, Piston, Cage, Reich and Adams, and then put them into context against Lutoslawski, Ligeti, Berio, Stockhausen, Tippett, Gorecki, Paart, and Takemitsu; in fact you would take a world overview. With a medium such as the wind ensemble, still a minority love, still way down below symphony orchestra, opera, chamber music, jazz, R & B and folk in terms of critical interest and popular acclaim, we desperately need this international approach, in our repertoire and in our performance standards. We need as Gunther Schuller puts it “to get out of academia” and enter the real world of music in the international world.
Introductory music - The Palace Rhapsody by Aulis Sallinen, published Novellos/Music Sales
Joint commission CBDNA – RNCM played by Baylor University Wind Ensemble
This paper is planned to give an overview of the scene and will fall into four sections.
1 Reference to Evaluation of compositions according to specific criteria of serious artistic merit; Acton Ostling 1978, Jay Gilbert 1993, Clifford Towner 2011
A presentation of 1000 Plus Selected Wind Works by Felix Hauswirth 8th edition 2010, available from Midwest Sheet Music who have a stock of these books at $55 and at $40 for the lower Grade book.
2 Introduction to three important international European composers and their works for wind ensemble
3 Brief introduction to current scene in Spain and the Certamen (contest) in Valencia
4 Overview of the music of three significant composers for wind band
Coda Brief comment on other European composers of importance.
Ninety nine years ago, Percy Grainger wrote:
Possibilities of the Concert Wind Band from the Standpoint of a Modern Composer 1918
No doubt there are many phases of musical emotion that the wind band is not so fitted to portray as is the symphony orchestra, but on the other hand it is quite evident that in certain realms of musical expressiveness the wind band has no rival.
Sir Simon Rattle I mean my vision is that there is a lot of first rate music but there is very little great music and the more we encourage composers to use the wind ensemble the better its going particularly with the generation of wind players that's out there now because it's a waste of a resource.
Gunther Schuller 1981 CBDNA Ann Arbor
There are too many fine and/or famous composers that have eluded your grasp thus far. You need more of that kind of international world calibre amongst the composers in your repertory before that world will begin to take you seriously, before a critic from the New York Times or The New Yorker will look in on what you’re doing and look in on festivals such as this. And you must more aggressively pursue that establishment world, with its critics and taste-makers, its foundations and other benefactors, its managers, and its musical leaders. You must reach out now beyond your own seemingly large but actually small world. For they will not come to you; you must go to them. Mostly they don’t know you exist.
The importance of writing music “of our age” – the dilemma of the composer
Composers try to answer the question of what to write in the 21st Century
Robin Holloway writes:
I am trying to write music, which, though conversant with most of the revolutionary technical innovations of the last 80 years or so, and by no means turning its back on them, nonetheless keeps a continuity of language and expressive intention with the classics and romantics of the past.
Composer, Diana Burrell, speaks of her perception of the job of a composer:
Try and find a language which doesn’t disregard everything which has happened in the twentieth century, that does acknowledge Stravinsky and Schoenberg and Boulez, while being simple enough to work for the concert hall, or church, or for young people – the wider community in some way, but which acknowledges that this is where we are – we can’t go back. We can’t unpick the twentieth century.
Sir Michael Tippett wrote of the importance of innovation:
We all know that the big public is extremely conservative and is willing to ring the changes on a few beloved works till the end of time, and that our concert life, through the taste of this public, suffers from a kind of inertia of sensibility, that seems to want no musical experience whatever beyond what it already knows.....Surely the matter is that the very big public masses together in a kind of dead passion of mediocrity, and that this blanket of mediocrity is deeply offended by any living passion of the unusual, the rare, the rich, the exuberant, the heroic and the aristocratic in art.
Christopher Marshall writes:
Sometimes the single-minded pursuit of originality severs too many links with the past. Without existing music as a reference point, communication may be lost. By the same token, a composer who restricts himself to the techniques and aesthetics of the past is irrelevant. The challenge, as I see it, is to produce music that is recognisably of our time, yet also timeless.
Who listens to all this music we're creating?
What is the market for the artistic works we perform and help to create?
Could there be an audience out in the world for what we do?
How would we find and/or develop this audience?
Could our music have greater cultural presence in other ways? Stuart Sims and Steve Peterson
1947 - 2017
This seventieth anniversary of Stravinsky’s re-orchestration of his iconic Symphonies of Wind Instruments is an ideal time to assess other seminal works of a similar stature, written in the past seventeen years.
I am astonished at how few performances Triumph by Michael Tippett and Robin Holloway’s, Entrance, Carousing, and Embarcation, have received. I wonder if our profession lacks a communication mechanism sufficiently to promote pieces like these which either fall outside the American mainstream or are not commercially promoted in this country.
Michael Haithcock
Works played:
Tippett published 1992 Schotts
Holloway published 1991 Boosey & Hawkes
1000 plus Selected works for Wind Orchestra & Wind Ensemble
“The 8th edition of my repertoire list contains more than 1000 selected works for wind orchestra and wind ensembles featuring over 500 composers from 42 countries.
I am aware that this list does not include every “important” work, but it certainly reflects my personal preferences.”
Felix Hauswirth
2010
Each entry includes the following:
Composer/arranger Date of composition
Nationality Title of composition
Instrumentation Category
Level of difficulty Duration
Publisher
Listing of solo works by instrumentation
Listing of works with voice and/or chorus
Listing of works by country
Listing by date of composition
Publishers & their websites
Back in 1981 in the keynote speech to CBDNA, Gunther Schuller advised us all to commission the greatest composers to write for the medium.
I think our colleagues in the orchestral world are doing rather better than we are; 3 important international composers have written major contributions to our repertoire in the last 17 years, works commissioned by major symphony orchestras.
THREE SIGNIFICANT 21st CENTURY SCORES
2000 Gran Duo Magnus Lindberg published Boosey and Hawkes
2009 Music for Winds Stanislaw Skrowaczewski published Schott
2011 Sonatas Poul Ruders published Hansen/Music Sales
MAGNUS LINDBERG GRAN DUO
Music is something which is about emotion. It is an experience.
Magnus Lindberg is one of the most talented European composers of his generation, particularly admired for his orchestral scores. His music is programmed by the world's leading conductors, performing organisations and festivals. Energy, colour and a thrilling density of material are the hallmarks of his recent style, which defines a new classical modernism.
Boosey and Hawkes website.
Gran Duo is a dialogue between the two orchestral families of woodwind and brass, each with their respective material. Their initial characters, equating to the poetic stereotypes of “masculine” and “ “feminine”, become progressively blurred and androgynised during the course of the work as larger sound masses give way to chamber music-style sub-groupings and individual instrumental solos.
Lindberg, a master of orchestral sound, has chosen virtually the same forces as Stravinsky in his Symphonies of Wind Instruments, and with its five connected movements Gran Duo is a symphony in the modern sense... A darkly brooding yet peaceful work that reflects something of a unique landscape.“
THE TIMES
STANISLAW SKROWACZEWSKI MUSIC FOR WINDS
October 3, 1923 -February 21, 2017
Seeking the Infinite: The Musical Life of Stanisław Skrowaczewski
The comprehensive new biography by Frederick E. Harris, Jr.
an epic work spanning more than 90 years of music history.
available at www.seekingtheinfinite.com and Amazon
List Price $34.95 Published by CreateSpace
"The listener may find the character or tone of the piece to be sad, mysterious or even tragic. This could be my own reaction to the state of our world, in which great art is slowly disappearing and being replaced by superficial 'semi-culture.' "
I. Misterioso - Allegro
II. Aria
III. Presto Tenebroso
IV. Molto Allegro
SONATAS P0UL RUDERS
World Premiere 01 June 2012
Koncerthuset, Copenhagen, Denmark
DR SymfoniOrkestret
Paul Meyer, conductor
REVEILLE - a short ´wake-up call´, a fanfare opening the gate into what follows.
PASTORALE - a peaceful unfolding of gentle chords and sounds of a bucolic nature.
SCHERZO - the woodwinds chase each other in a wild relay run. The mood changes, and we are plunged right into darkest night.
NOCTURNE - subtitled sinistro; low rumbling chords trombones, prickly outbursts in oboes and horns form a sinister backdrop to this wordless Grand Guignol…(Theatre of Fear and Terror)
PANORAMA - an unfolding festive, almost pageant like ´sound-scape´of dancing rhythms and jubilant scales. Slowly, however, the tempo drops and the boisterous body of sound is slowly and mercilessly ´skeletonized´ - and at the end there is nothing left.
RETRAITE - "the last post". The day is over, the sun sets.
3 MAJOR EUROPEAN COMPOSERS OF WIND MUSIC SINCE 2000
Adam Gorb - Kenneth Hesketh - Luis Serrano Alarcon
Adam Gorb Works played:
Bridgewater Breeze
Concertino for Saxophone and Wind Ensemble
Adrenaline City
Farewell
Published by Maecenas http://www.maecenasmusic.co.uk/
Adrenaline City published by Studio Music
Kenneth Hesketh Works played:
Masque
Vranjanka
Diaghilev Dances
Danceries set 1
Published by Faber Music www.fabermusicalarconmusic
Luis Serrano Alarcon Works played:
Concertango
Duende
Marco Polo; the Cathay Years
Published by Piles and by alarconmusic.com
C.I.B.M CERTAMEN INTERNATIONAL DE BANDAS DE MUSICA Spain’s leading wind band contest, in Valencia every July
For information, visit the website
WWW.CIBM-VALENCIA
CURRENT CONTEST INFORMATION
History Previous Contests
Mandatory Pieces Winners
Program How to Arrive
Registration Related Links
Rules & Procedures Audio Archive
Organization Contact
Jury
Some leading Spanish composers:
Teo Aparicio-Barbaran
Ferrer Ferran
Martinez Gallego
Oscar Navarro
José Suner-Oriola
Josep Vicent Egea
Playing at end of lecture - Concerto for Wind Orchestra Christian Lindberg played by University of Kentucky Wind Ensemble
INTERNATIONAL REPERTOIRE SERIES
Issued by Mark Morette of Mark Custom
Eleven compact discs of music by
Recorded by Doyen and now re-issued by Mark Custom available at Midwest Sheetmusic today
VOL. 8 52678-MCD Wind music by Richard Rodney Bennett & Irwin Bazelon
VOL. 9 52579-MCD Wind Music of Edward Gregson
VOL.10 52680-MCD Wind music by David Bedford, conductor Clark Rundell
VOL.11 52691-MCD Wind music by Judith Bingham, Adam Gorb and Roger Marsh
Re-issued by Klavier
KCD11152 Wind music by Nigel Clarke, Adam Gorb, Martin Ellerby & Geoffrey Poole
Available from Mark Custom Recording Service
VOL. 1 – UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY WIND ENSEMBLE (4949-MCD)
Clarke – Hesketh – Strens – Marshall - Lindberg
VOL.2- UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY WIND ENSEMBLE (4949-MCD)
Gorb – Lindberg – Bitensky – Rodrigo
VOL.3 – ITHACA COLLEGE SYMPHONIC BAND (6733-MCD)
Ranki – Bennett – Bourgeois – Carroll – Connor
VOL.4 – ITHACA COLLEGEWIND ENSEMBLE (6804-MCD)
Makris – Marshall – Bennett – Gorb – Wengler
VOL.5 – US MARINE BAND/SUNY FREDONIA/BAYLOR UNIVERSITY/ROYAL WELSH COLLEGE (8655-MCD)
Orr – Sallinen – Gorb – Hesketh – Taylor – Gorb
VOL.6 – PHILHARMONIC WIND – SINGAPORE
Hesketh – Gulda – Chai – Marshall
VOL. 7 – U.S. COAST GUARD BAND
Hesketh – Ranki – Gilmore – Tomlinson – Alarcon – Bennett – Gorb - Wengler
THE ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC WIND ORCHESTRA
Recorded by Chandos
CHAN 9549 Percy Grainger Works for Wind Orchestra volume 1
CHAN 9630 Percy Grainger works for Wind Orchestra volume 2
CHAN 9697 British Wind Band Classics, Holst & Vaughan Williams
CHAN 9805 German Wind Band Classics, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Toch & Blacher
CHAN 9897 French Wind Band Classics, Berlioz, Schmitt, Milhaud Bozza & Saint-Saens