Margaret Brouwer (b,. 1940) is head of the composition department at the Cleveland Institute of Music; she holds a doctorate from Indiana University. This three-year sampling of recent compositions shows a range of interests from a whimsical theatricality to a Romantic but solidly crafted conservatism. Crosswinds (1995) is a 14-minute, three-movement string quartet, cast in a traditional fast-slow-fast form. Brouwer’s approach is motivic and basically modal-tonal, with very balanced writing among the parts. Textural dissonance keeps the language more or less contemporary; the main thematic content comes from a lynchpin downward-moving whole tone scale as well as references to the folk-music styles of rural Virginia. There is fiddlelike writing for all four players, a lot of open string harmony, and tunes of diatonic simplicity, but the architecture and transformational processes follow a "classical" trajectory.

The Sonata for Horn and Piano (1996) is yet more conservative in language but reveals a higher degree of emotional investment. Melodically driven, harmonically very tonal, it moves through a contemplative first movement, "Hymn," to an upbeat one, "Riding to Higher Clouds," forming a contrasted but symmetrical diptych.

Another slow-fast diptych, Prelude and Vivace (1996), is a chamber version of Brouwer’s Clarinet Concerto, which was composed for Richard Stoltzman in 1994. The ensemble is fairly large, with percussion including a siren. The Prelude is free and introspective, with a rising chromatic fast passage that returns as a signpost throughout the work. Brouwer’s theatricality comes out in the Vivace, which is more aggressive, with a kind of false and funny tension like the music of clowns at the circus, with cartoon-music exchanges between the soloist and ensemble.

Whimsy becomes downright silly in the flute and spoken-word monodrama of the "No Rotary Phone" section of Diary of an Alien, which comprises four movements to be played in any order; in any combination or singly. Three [other] characters emerge: "A Call for Action" is predictably straightforward, with scale motifs its primary content; "Drifting" is a study of tremolos and vocal-aided multiphonics; and "Somewhere the Bells" builds harmonic ambiguities via the echo-layering of a long-breathed, mostly diatonic melody.

The more reserved stances of Brouwer’s Crosswinds and the Horn Sonata serve her music better than does her goofy streak, though those more straightforward pieces show plenty of invention in addition to their beauty and craft. The performances show this off to fine effect. Once again the Cassatt Quartet proves itself a first-rate interpreter of the music of the current American mainstream. Kristin Thelander and Rene Lecuona are wonderful in the Sonata, and the performance of Prelude and Vivace is also first rate, including the very fluid and characterful playing of clarinetist Daniel Silver.

Robert Kirzinger - Fanfare, November/December 1999