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G Major
2003
2 flutes
2 oboes
2 clarinets 1º in Bb, 2º in A
2 bassoons
4 horns in F
2 trumpets in C
2 trombones
tuba
2 percussion
1: 3 cencerros, glockenspiel, 3 suspended cymbals, 3 woodblocks
2: tam-tam, xylophone
strings
duration 11'
commissioned by The New England Philharmonic
first performance:
The New England Philharmonic, cond. Richard Pittman
Tsai Performance Center, Boston / March 1, 2003
RECORDING—first performance:
n.b. this recording is of the unrevised version and, in a few places,
deviates slightly from the score below
SCORE
see also Antimphony
PROGRAM NOTE
My first thoughts for this commission were to gather up some of my favorite orchestral sounds (brass swelling out of nowhere, long, long pedal notes, overlapping woodwind figures) and create a work which exploited these ideas. As I composed, the piece felt ever more expository and I recognized places I wanted the music to go–but not just yet.
The music falls, broadly, into four sections; an opening built around arpeggiated woodwind chords over low pedal notes; a faster, repetitive section built from little interlocking figures over which the blurry woodwind, again, take precedence; a slow static section in which a chord is very slowly filled in by the strings while the woodwind become increasingly agitated; and a final motoric section which pushes the interlocking figures to a greater level of intensity. The ending is a trick and a surprise, but also a lead-in to what will be the next movement.
The piece very much looks toward G as a pitch center although it is not, strictly speaking, written in G major. However this key has, inevitably, many musical associations and connotations for me; directness, sturdiness, and a bright kind of plain-speaking which lies back of both the construction and the surface of this work.
In 2006 I composed Antimphony. This piece, retitled Open and with some slight changes, is now the first of Antimphony's six movements.
REVIEW
The evening opened with the newest piece, a 2003 movement by Andy Vores, written originally for NEP, and called at that time G Major. It has since taken on a second life as the first movement of Vores’s Antimphony (anti-symphony, get it?), in which position it has been renamed Open. The work’s original title is, like a good deal of the musical content, a bit of a joke: while in several senses the work is about G major, it is not actually in it, and its final two chords are G major and D7, meaning that one is left hanging for a resolution. The music of the piece is mostly like that as well, full of passages sounding like they’re about to settle on something—a chord, a tune, a cadence, whatever—and never actually doing it. There are many gestures, ostinati that hold things together, cross-cuts, and an overall A-B-A structure. The final section has a whiff of Petrushka about it, but it is overall a witty, slick and entertaining amuse-bouche. Pittman and his band kept everything humming quite satisfactorily.
Vance R. Koven • The Boston Musical Intelligencer