Bright Winds

Jean Françaix, Quartet for Winds (flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon): Françaix (1912-97) was a prolific 20^th Century French composer, a virtuoso pianist and a master orchestrator. He grew up in a musical household and studied composition with the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger. His works– which number more than 200 – were written for almost every instrumental combination of chamber music. His neo-Classical style rejected atonality in favor of music that was light, witty and designed to “give pleasure.” Françaix wrote this quartet in 1933 at age 21 for the staff of the Le Mans Conservatorie, where his father was the director. Françaix explained the origins of this quartet as follows: “As the horn tutor who was there at the time was never quite sure what sound would emerge from his instrument – his fame was as a specialist in the art of playing several notes at the same time – I had decided not to ‘rouse the volcano,’ and wrote a quartet without horn which would be less likely to produce disconcerting surprises.” French wit, indeed.

Maurice Ravel, “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” arr. Hans Abrahamsen for Wind Quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn): Maurice Ravel was a French Romantic composer who lived from 1875 to 1937. In addition to chamber music, he composed orchestral music (“Bolero” was instantly famous, well before Bo Derek seduced Dudley Moore to that work in the movie “10”). Ravel also composed ballets, operas and vocal works, as well as a large number of virtuosic pieces for piano. Ravel was not physically fit for military service in World War I because of his slight height and weight. Nonetheless, he volunteered as a transport driver at the front, where he experienced the horrors of war first-hand. Ravel wrote “Le Tombeau de Couperin” in 1914-17, his last work for solo piano. In 1919, Ravel crafted an orchestral version of four of the six movements of the piano version. It is that brilliant Ravel orchestration that Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952) arranged for wind quintet. At one level, each movement of the work “looks back to the French Baroque, paying homage to the harpsichord suites of Couperin and Rameau” (Alex Ross). But, knowing that the tombeau style commemorates the death of a notable person, and that Ravel dedicated each movement to a friend killed in the war, “the old styles pass by,” as Ross put it, “like a procession of ghosts.”

Ludwig van Beethoven, Wind Octet in E-flat Major, op. 103 (2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns): The etymology of this work is complicated and its opus number – 103 -- is deceptive. The young Beethoven (1770-1827) wrote this wind octet – a very popular format at that time in royal courts – before he left Bonn for Vienna in November 1792, to study with Haydn and pursue his career. A year later, Haydn wrote to the Prince Elector of Vienna seeking financial support for Beethoven, implying that he had written this “eight voice Parthie” after he moved to Vienna. The musically-savvy Elector indignantly replied that he knew better – Beethoven wrote it for the wind ensemble of the Prince Elector of Cologne, who lived in Bonn. (No wonder Beethoven once said, “There have been thousands of princes and will be thousands more, but there is only one Beethoven!") The work was first published in 1795, rewritten by Beethoven as a string quintet (in E-flat Major, op. 4). It wasn’t published in its original version, as a wind octet, until after Beethoven’s death. It’s good that it was. Along with two Mozart wind serenades, one of which Brightmusic will perform on this program, Beethoven’s wind octet is regarded as one of the most important works of the genre.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade No. 12 for Winds in C Minor, K.388 (2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns): Mozart (1756-1791) composed this work in 1782 or 1783. At that time, daytime entertainment music was often called a “divertimento,” while nighttime entertainment music bore the label “serenade.” Mozart’s own notes call this work “Nacht Musique,” an unusual mixture of German and French. Regardless of label, this is hardly light entertainment music. In form, it has been characterized as “a symphony for wind octet.” In substance, it has been called “austere,” “puzzling,” “mysterious,” “problematical,” “defiantly dark” in character and “unforgiving in its seriousness.” Mozart obviously regarded this composition highly, for he used it in two later works. He transcribed it for string quintet in K.406, and he borrowed the principal melody of Movement II for his opera Cosi fan tutte. Whatever dark mystery Mozart may have intended this work to explore seems lifted by the Serenade’s triumphant ending in the key of C Major.