Quintet No. 3 for Winds (II, III’)Maslanka (b. 1943)
David Maslanka is an American composer whose pieces for wind ensemble are especially well-known. He now lives in Missoula, Montana. Big Sky Country seems like the perfect setting for Maslanka’s music, which often integrates spiritual concepts and suggests the expansiveness of a mountain landscape.
Maslanka regularly studies the music J.S. Bach as a source of inspiration. This quintet includes quotations from several Bach chorale melodies. The second movement features an extended soliloquy for solo flute embellished in a style that hearkens back to the beautiful wind obbligatos heard in many of Bach’s cantatas. Throughout the movement, the wind quintet mimics the hushed, plaintive sound of a church organ playing the Bach chorale “Ermuntre dich, mein schwacher Geist” (“Take courage, my weak spirit”). In the second half of the movement, a more extroverted, flowing melody soars atop a foundation of repeated triplets, the kind of rhythmic and harmonic ostinato that is common in Maslanka’s music. A simple, unembellished statement of the chorale tune closes the movement.
Marked “Very Fast,” the third movement is a spectacular display of the fireworks that the instruments of the wind quintet are capable of producing together. Highly episodic and dramatic, the movement includes brazen, galloping music as well as a warm, reflective middle section that closes with a tender duet for flute and clarinet. This central section is a set of variations on a descending melody that suggests an incantation ritual. A chorale-like melody speeds toward the conclusion: a rousing and celebratory coda. City of Tomorrow
Classical Music | Music for Quintet
David Maslanka
Quintet No. 3 for Winds (II, III) Play
Recorded on 04/18/2012, uploaded on 11/27/2012
Musician's or Publisher's Notes
Quintet No. 3 for Winds (II, III’) Maslanka (b. 1943)
David Maslanka is an American composer whose pieces for wind ensemble are especially well-known. He now lives in Missoula, Montana. Big Sky Country seems like the perfect setting for Maslanka’s music, which often integrates spiritual concepts and suggests the expansiveness of a mountain landscape.
Maslanka regularly studies the music J.S. Bach as a source of inspiration. This quintet includes quotations from several Bach chorale melodies. The second movement features an extended soliloquy for solo flute embellished in a style that hearkens back to the beautiful wind obbligatos heard in many of Bach’s cantatas. Throughout the movement, the wind quintet mimics the hushed, plaintive sound of a church organ playing the Bach chorale “Ermuntre dich, mein schwacher Geist” (“Take courage, my weak spirit”). In the second half of the movement, a more extroverted, flowing melody soars atop a foundation of repeated triplets, the kind of rhythmic and harmonic ostinato that is common in Maslanka’s music. A simple, unembellished statement of the chorale tune closes the movement.
Marked “Very Fast,” the third movement is a spectacular display of the fireworks that the instruments of the wind quintet are capable of producing together. Highly episodic and dramatic, the movement includes brazen, galloping music as well as a warm, reflective middle section that closes with a tender duet for flute and clarinet. This central section is a set of variations on a descending melody that suggests an incantation ritual. A chorale-like melody speeds toward the conclusion: a rousing and celebratory coda. City of Tomorrow
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