About this work:
CHORALE AND FIDDLE TUNE is the winner of the Pittsburgh Symphony’s 2014 H.J. Heinz Company Audience of the Future Composition Contest. The PSO under conductor Fawzi Naimor performed the piece in its Audience of the Future concert of April 2014.
CHORALE AND FIDDLE TUNE is a meeting of musical ideas from disparate worlds. The original objective was to compose a piece that would start from a simple beginning, take you on a journey through different moods and scenarios and then arrive at a satisfying conclusion.
The beginning is basically a groove - very gentle and slightly mystical, but a groove nonetheless, a remnant from all my years spent writing for and playing in rhythm sections. If trumpets, oboes, flutes, bassoons and clarinets don’t exactly seem like groove instruments, well, you can see my problem. I was learning to divorce myself from the ever-present guitars, pianos, drums and basses which seem to be hard-wired into my musical psyche.
Flute, clarinet and pizzicato strings lay out the first sparsely syncopated rhythms, rising from a mysterious opening. Solo brass and bassoon soon enter to reinforce and grow the feel, playing riffs that might be at home in a pop song. Those rhythm figures are then passed to the winds as two solo violins introduce the first statement of the chorale.
At the end of that chorale, the full first violin section breaks out exuberantly with the fiddle tune, repeating it over and over in increasingly louder and more rowdy variations, recruiting the other sections of the orchestra as they go.
At the climax of the piece, the chorale and the fiddle tune run simultaneously – a collision of styles that hits an uplifting note and hopefully leaves behind an after-glow of optimism. First the winds and strings fly high over the brass’ weighty version of the chorale, and then in the next statement, broad and lyrical strings take over the chorale duties. It all winds down to a very quiet, humble and tranquil end, almost completely settling before a hyperactive and quixotic coda crops up to bring it home.
CHORALE AND FIDDLE TUNE was originally written for CELA (Composers Ensemble Los Angeles), and the members of that dedicated and talented group have my special thanks for helping me to road test it, work out the bugs and get the piece up and running. Many thanks also to James Domine and the San Fernando Valley Symphony for premiering the work in 2012.