Brass Quintet No. 1

SKU: PR.114412250

UPC: 680160017768.

Brass Quintet No. 1 was composed with great pleasure for the American Brass Quintet during the summer of 2000. It is cast in three movements. The work opens with a series of dramatic annunciatory gestures that serve to set into relief the faster, more angular, occasionally skittish heart of the movement. Both the beginning and the end of this core are framed by a long-held E-flat: two pillars that support and elevate the central part of the movement. The slow and quiet second movement can be viewed as a kind of lens or prism through which the music passes and changes. Pitches, then harmonies, are gradually brought into focus, then refracted - splintering off into more individual phrases (I was thinking here of the way light is split and bent by the prisms in our kitchen window). The end of the movement is characterized by a turn of the lens in the opposite direction as the music gradually blurs, then fades.   The final movement begins with a bit of imitative counterpoint. The character of the music is initially unabashed and proud, but is quickly foiled by increasing speed - a frantic kind of stretto! A more playful narrative follows, though; this occasionally studded with sharp, percussive chords. A brief choral-like section provides textural contrast before the recapitulation, and the familiar E-flat pillar from movement one ends the work.