Symphony No. 15 (Homage to Mozart)
Gloria Coates
About this work:
Naxos CD 8.559371 Notes by Kyle Gann;
"Symphony No. 15," the newest and most ambitious wok here, bears a subtitle, 'Homage to Mozart,'which might lead one to expect a neoclassic work. Nothing could be further from the case. The first movement, 'Iridescences,' is one of Coates's darkest and most abstract essays, though its evolution is quite transparent. Here are swooping, upward glissandos in the strings, wavery string tones using wide vibrato, timpani tremolos rising in pitch with the foot pedal, and a continuum of intermittent dissonant pitches across the orchestra's entire register. The piec breathes with a slow, irregular pulse, the energy reeling from one part of the orchestra to another and back, and the harmonies, though dissonant, are quite stable and change only slowly.
After this dark beginning, the second movement, 'Puzzle Canon,' enters in completely unexpected tonal chords. The strangeness returns, though, when the strings enter in dissonant slow glissandos, fanning out in opposite directions as the wind band plays on - a characteristic, 'smeared-tonality' texture that Coates has used elsewhere, beginning in her "Fourth Symphony." The 'puzzle' of the title is the identity of the quasi-quotation in the winds: it is taken from Mozart's last motet, the "Ave Verum Corpus in D Major, K.618 - and played backwards. The contrapuntal lines are silken smooth, but the harmony isn't marked by the forward-leading progression one eexpects from tonal music. The glissandos grow in range and volume until they engulf the motet, though the latter eventually returns - this time played forwards - and finally merges into the strings as a canon.
The final movement takes its title 'What Are Stars?'- from an Emily Dickinson poem:
'Go thy Great Way!
The Stars thou meetst
Are even (seen) as Thyself
For what are Stars but Asterisks
To point a human Life?'
Here is a dialogue between two elements: an original chromatically wandering chorale in the brass and later winds, and a texture of multilayered glissandos in the strings. Punctuated by the ever-present timpani, these textures alternate and overlap with the usual clarity of gesture that makes Coates's music so easy to absorb despite the complexity and weirdness of its sound world. "Symphony No. 15" was commissioned by the European Festival Passau for Mozart's 250th anniversary year, 2006; composed in 2004 -5, it was premiered by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michael Boder." Kyle Gann
This symphony was No.1 in the E-Music downloading chart both in the category of orchestral music and No. 1 under CDs out of 16,000 classical albums for 2 weeks of February 2008.
Year composed: 2004
Duration: 22:20:80
Ensemble type: Orchestra:Standard Orchestra
Instrumentation:
Instrumentation notes: 2 Flutes (Piccolo 1,2,; alto Flutes 1,2)
2 Oboes (English Horn)
2 Clarinets in B flat
2 Bassoons (Contra Bassoon)
3 Horns
2 Trumpets in B flat
Timpani (1)
Violins 1, 2,3
Violas 1, 2
Cellos 1, 2
Double Basses 1, 2