PROGRAM NOTE
[This program note was written for the work’s premiere performance in 1987.]
CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA is the latest in an ongoing series of compositions began in the mid 1970’s in which an exploration, at least on one level, of the relationship between a given work’s formal/dramatic essence and its chosen instrumentation is a significant compositional concern.
A musical composition, then, is a dramatic form in which different characters, or types, are set in motion and developed, interacting with and against each other, together forming a new reality.
To be sure, I never set out consciously to write a ‘series of works’ exploring this or any other premise. But over the last decade or so it gradually became clear to me that my love for and fascination with sound, specifically (though not exclusively) live instrumental sound, had relatively little to do with what at a certain point in this century became a central issue for many composers, namely an interest in sound per se or sound for sound’s sake. Rather, for me, a participating instrument—or, in the case of the large canvas of a symphony orchestra, a group of instruments—becomes something akin to a character in a play, with which a very specific repertory of musical materials and gestures as well as a distinct emotional existence, may be associated.
In the case of the Concerto for Orchestra the three main protagonists, presented early on in the first movement, are—in their order of appearance—the brass, strings, woodwinds, with continually varying subgroupings evolving as the work proceeds. Excepting the timpani, the percussion and piano are not treated here as a truly independent entity. They are a ‘supporting cast’, forming various structural connections with other participants. And though, again, I was not working with a set idea of creating analogies to a world outside the music, in retrospect it becomes apparent that my characters, even as they go through change and transformation, conflict, merger and evolution, never lose their basic, individual strain. Inevitably, it seems, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The Concerto is cast in a four-movement symphonic form. While a detailed chronology of the events seems to me superfluous, perhaps the following words—they definitely are not meant as titles for the movements—will evoke images which have their correspondences with the music:
I. Entrances; a great unfolding
II. Entr’acte; mournful
III. Rites
IV. Epilogue; an aftermath
Concerto for Orchestra was begun in the spring of 1986 and composed predominantly during the months of July to November 1986.
—Shulamit Ran
INFORMATION
Commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra
in honor of the ACO’s 10th anniversary
with funding from Francis Goelet
Premiere: February 1, 1987
American Composers Orchestra
Catherine Comet, conductor
Carnegie Hall, New York City
Duration: c. 26’
SHEET MUSIC
Available from your favorite sheet music seller, or directly from Theodore Presser.