Sinfonietta
Don Freund
About this work:
Don Freund: Sinfonietta
(Program notes by the composer)
Sinfonietta emulates its namesake — the Sinfonietta of Leos Janacek — in a number of ways. Both pieces use folk-like ideas to provide material that is sharply-profiled and direct (although my own “folk” roots are very different from Janacek’s, and I define them broadly enough to include swing and rock-and-roll). Both pieces are comprised of an irregular number of short sections, each with its own strongly independent melodic and rhythmic personality, with some occasional cyclical references. In both pieces, the form, though superficially episodic, is designed to create a eventual integrity, a culminating synthesis. My fascination with this formal phenomenon of small sections or pieces accumulating into a larger continuum spans two decades, and arises from an early realization that many of the pieces I love for their continual freshness and uncompromised vitality fall into this formal category — Schumann’s Papillons, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, to mention a few. Although I don’t believe one can postulate a demonstable analytical system for how these forms are constructed, there must be a definite design of what I call “psycho-informational vectors” in the way the various sections are created, articulated, and arrayed. In other words, the composer creates with purposefulness and playfulness an engagingly winding, zig-zagging but nonetheless directional path of varied perceptual attitudes for the listener.
Ultimately, I might be better advised to ask the listener to ignore all the above; I simply hope that the listener will find in the tunes and characters and shapes and surprises of my Sinfonietta some of the same delight and emotional resonance I have found in the tunes, characters, shapes and surprises of Janacek’s score.
Year composed: 1988
Duration: 00:18:00
Ensemble type: Orchestra:Unknown
Instrumentation: 1 Piccolo, 2 Flute, 2 Oboe, 2 Clarinet, 2 Bassoon, 1 Alto Saxophone, 4 Horn in F, 3 Trumpet, 2 Trombone, 1 Bass Trombone, 1 Tuba, 1 Timpani, 3 Percussion (General), 1 Piano, 1 Strings (General)