No Strings
Faye-Ellen1 Silverman
About this work:
The title “No Strings” refers both to the instrumentation and to the independent use of these instruments in solo passages and, at times, with specifically assigned musical motives. This independent usage seemed especially appropriate for a piece written for the Brooklyn Philharmonic, an orchestra of virtuoso soloists.
The first movement (“Basically Brass”) features the alto saxophone (an instrument with both brass and woodwind qualities), often accompanied by soloistic brass instruments. These thinner-textured passages are balanced by full chords using the entire ensemble. The second movement (“Mixed Means”), which opens with an extended passage for timpani alone, features short, seemingly unrelated motives in several instruments which gradually come together. The most important of these is an innocuous, banal idea in fourths, first stated in the bassoon, which spreads to a few other instruments and gradually takes over by means of assertion, only to have a few instruments re-assert their independence as the movement ends. The last movement (“Wandering Woodwinds”) again balances fully orchestrated passages with solos, only this time the former passages are all based on minor second or major seventh motifs, and woodwind soloists (here the alto saxophone is treated as a woodwind) - three, then two, then single woodwind - replace the brass. This third movement, which contains references to the first two, ends with the individual instruments breaking away from the full ensemble, once again asserting their position of “no strings”.
Year composed: 1982
Duration: 00:10:00
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Other Combinations, 10+ players
Instrumentation: 1 Flute, 1 Oboe, 1 Bass Clarinet, 1 Bassoon, 1 Alto Saxophone, 1 Horn in F, 1 Trumpet, 1 Trombone, 1 Tuba, 1 Percussion (General)
Instrumentation notes: flute doubles piccolo