Orchestra Bass Clarinet,
Bass Drum, Bassoon 1,
Bassoon 2, Celesta,
Chimes, Clarinet,
Clarinet 1, Clarinet 2,
Claves, Contrabass,
Contrabassoon, Cowbell,
Crotales, English Horn,
Glockenspiel, Harp, Horn
1, Horn 2, Horn 3, Horn
4, Maracas, Marimba, Oboe
1 and more.
SKU:
PR.11641737S
Composed
by Steven Stucky. Study
Score. 68 pages. Duration
9 minutes. Merion Music
#116-41737S. Published by
Merion Music
(PR.11641737S).
ISBN
9781491136133. UPC:
680160688432.
Son
et lumière
(“sound and
light,†a kind of
show staged for tourists
at historic sites or
famous buildings) is an
orchestral entertainment
whose subject is the play
of colors, bright
surfaces, and shimmery
textures. I have tried in
this music to recapture
the élan and immediacy
that regular meters and
repetitive rhythms make
possible—something
forbidden during the
modernist regime but
recently restored in the
post-modern work of
composers like John
Adams, Steve Reich, and
others. Throughout its
brief nine-minute span,
then, the piece is built
almost exclusively of
short, busy ostinato
figures—my
attempt, I suppose, to
achieve the rhythmic
vitality of minimalism,
but without giving in to
the over-simple harmonic
language that usually
comes with
it.Surprisingly, the
musical materials seemed
determined to shape
themselves into an
approximation of
nineteenth-century sonata
form. We hear an
introduction, a first
theme (based on triadic
broken chords), a second
theme (beginning with the
flute solo), and a
closing theme (led by two
piccolos). In a sort of
development section,
these materials are
recombined in new ways;
in a recapitulation, both
the first and second
themes are recalled more
or less intact (part of
the second is actually
repeated quite
literally).Then, in the
coda, a second surprise:
as if another, different
music has been lurking
all the while behind the
shiny surface, the
strings now unexpectedly
split off from the rest
of the orchestra to
assert a new, more
passionate, more
“seriousâ€
voice, transcending the
external show of sound
and light.Son et
lumière, commissioned
by the Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra, was composed
between June and December
1988 in Ithaca (N.Y.), in
Los Angeles, and at the
artists’ colony
Yaddo, in Saratoga
Springs (N.Y.). David
Zinman conducted the
first performance in
Baltimore on 18 May 1989;
André Previn gave the
West Coast premiere with
the Los Angeles
Philharmonic on 18
January, 1990.
Son et
lumière (“sound
and light,†a kind
of show staged for
tourists at historic
sites or famous
buildings) is an
orchestral entertainment
whose subject is the play
of colors, bright
surfaces, and shimmery
textures. I have tried in
this music to recapture
the élan and immediacy
that regular meters and
repetitive rhythms make
possible—something
forbidden during the
modernist regime but
recently restored in the
post-modern work of
composers like John
Adams, Steve Reich, and
others. Throughout its
brief nine-minute span,
then, the piece is built
almost exclusively of
short, busy ostinato
figures—my
attempt, I suppose, to
achieve the rhythmic
vitality of minimalism,
but without giving in to
the over-simple harmonic
language that usually
comes with
it.Surprisingly, the
musical materials seemed
determined to shape
themselves into an
approximation of
nineteenth-century sonata
form. We hear an
introduction, a first
theme (based on triadic
broken chords), a second
theme (beginning with the
flute solo), and a
closing theme (led by two
piccolos). In a sort of
development section,
these materials are
recombined in new ways;
in a recapitulation, both
the first and second
themes are recalled more
or less intact (part of
the second is actually
repeated quite
literally).Then, in the
coda, a second surprise:
as if another, different
music has been lurking
all the while behind the
shiny surface, the
strings now unexpectedly
split off from the rest
of the orchestra to
assert a new, more
passionate, more
“seriousâ€
voice, transcending the
external show of sound
and light.Son et
lumière, commissioned
by the Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra, was composed
between June and December
1988 in Ithaca (N.Y.), in
Los Angeles, and at the
artists’ colony
Yaddo, in Saratoga
Springs (N.Y.). David
Zinman conducted the
first performance in
Baltimore on 18 May 1989;
André Previn gave the
West Coast premiere with
the Los Angeles
Philharmonic on 18
January, 1990.