Margaret Brouwer - Works: Music for Brass



		CELEBRATION, 1998 (7:30 min.) Movements: The Colonade Evening by the Chapel Festival of Memories 2 Trumpets, French horn, trombone, tuba Commission:* Washington and Lee University for the 250th Anniversary Premiere: 9/9/98 Washington and Lee U, 250th Anniversary Convocation, Institute Brass Quintet The first movement is a fanfare and celebratory in nature employing occasional Renaissance characteristics. “Evening by the Chapel” is reminiscent of old hymns and chants (but in an almost improvisatory style) that might have drifted from the chapel windows on a summer’s evening. “Festival of memories”, a fast moving maze in perpetual motion hides motives of the school’s fight song and alma mater. Performance Materials: Please click HERE for rental and sale information regarding performance material. Recording available. SCHerZOid, 1989 (6 min.) Solo Horn Premiere: 4/18/89 University of Idaho, Moscow, ID The request for me to write a solo horn piece provided the ideal opportunity to explore the captivating beauty of the sound world that is particular to the French horn. Within that sound world are timbres that are highly contrasting. Consequently SCHerZOid is a study in opposites. It combines the contrasting sounds that the horn does so beautifully; the familiar, singing lyricism with the heroic and the aggressive. It also explores new sounds that are sometimes shocking and grotesque. The contrasting sections of the traditional scherzo form became in this scherzo continually more separate as the piece progressed until finally it seemed that the piece had assumed a complex life of its own. Performance Materials: Please click HERE for rental and sale information regarding performance material. Recording available on Centaur Records, 1993 - CRC 2138 Works by Allan Blank and Margaret Brouwer. SONATA FOR HORN AND PIANO, 1996 (14:30 min.) Movements: Hymn Riding to Higher Clouds Commission: Horn Consortium Commissioning Group Premiere: 10/18/96 Kristin Thelander, Faculty Recital, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, At the turn of a new century, and after a century of atonality, I was eager to find paths in new harmonic directions. Sonata for Horn and Piano was representative of explorations of mine toward a personal expression in that new direction. It was also a very personal expression of searching prompted by the deaths of two loved ones within a year's time. Hymn, straightforward and melodic, expresses grief and faith. Riding to Higher Clouds deals with the complex struggle between the conflicting emotions of loss, hope, memories, and understanding. Performance Materials: Please click HERE for rental and sale information regarding performance material. Recording available on CRI, 1999 - CD #821 "Crosswinds". TIMESPAN, 1986 14 min. Movements: Rondeau squared Ancient Calls Shining Metal Brass Quintet 2 trumpets (doubling Fluegelhorns), Horn, Trombone, Tuba Premiere: 10/6/87* San Francisco, COMPOSER'S INC., New Albion Brass Quintet The remembrance of time spent viewing the stone circles and standing stones of Scotland and Dartmoor where I could almost hear the eerie sounds of primitive horn calls floating across the hills, and of a day at Stonehenge where a mystifyingly modern cosmological knowledge on the part of Bronze Age people seems in evidence, inspired an interest in combining the ancient and primitive with the space-age. “Rondeau Squared” follows the rondeau form of the 13th century French Trouvères which exploited basically the alternation between chorus and soloist and had two thematic ideas. My contemporary version is elaborated so that each section of the large rondeau form is, in itself, a small rondeau form. Of the three movements, “Ancient Calls” was written first. While writing it, I became interested in making a connection between the ancient and the contemporary. “Ancient Calls” reminded me of the bleak hills and ancient yet modern stone markings and sight lines found in Dartmoor and Scotland. It uses multiphonics and changing vowel sounds and recurrent permutations of aggregates involving the perfect fifth. “Shining Metal” leaves the ancient behind and is a space-age maze of rhythmic complexities presented through the utilization of three short motivic ideas. Performance Materials: Please click HERE for rental and sale information regarding performance material. Recording available. TOLLING THE SPIRITS, 1994 (18 min.) Movements: Polluted Landscape Lago di Como Spirits Monk’s Canon Clangor Movements can also be performed separately or in any combination. Brass Quintet 2 trumpets (doubling fluegelhorns), Horn, Trombone, Tuba Premiere: 10/29/94* Chestnut Brass Company, Philadelphia, PA Tolling The Spirits was begun during a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como in Italy. The time there was filled with the sounds of bells ringing and a sense of the presence of ancient spirits.Polluted Landscape portrays the ancient sleepy villages and the quiet lake (an occasional bell ringing), seemingly alive with restless spirits, as it is engulfed by an evening mist, or unfortunately sometimes by a yellowish polluted fog. This movement is played spatially with the horn, trombone and tuba at the sides and back of the hall. Lago di Como was inspired by the local bells heard ringing in the village of Bellagio and from various other villages across the lake and down the valley. In this movement, the pitch and rhythmic relationships between these various bells are explored, as well as finding ways to imitate the colors of the bells by exploiting the overtones of the brass. During the movement, the performers move to the stage. Spirits experiments with the timbral possibilities of using only air sounds. The aura of spirits permeated the mountain, the ruins of an ancient fortress on the precipice over the lake and the 17th century Villa where I lived. Perhaps inspired by this influence, or by the historical land of Renaissance music, Monks' Canon became a five-voice strict canon, with two voices in augmentation, which evolves through tonal and non-tonal harmonies. It culminates in a stretto before the final coda. With the return from the peaceful old-world setting of Bellagio to the clamorous, frenetic pace of modern day American life, Clangor appeared. Clangor is a stream of consciousness depiction of the complexities, tensions and scattered spirit of a modern-day working woman. Performance Materials: Please click HERE for rental and sale information regarding performance material. Recording available.