Autumnsongs (2010)

Violin, Cello, and Piano – 20 mins.

Video

Audio

Score (Free Download)

Program Note

Don Freund’s Autumnsongs was commissioned in 2010 jointly by Indiana Music Teachers Association and Music Teachers National Association as part of the MTNA Commissioned Composer Program. The work was composed to be performed by a trio of fabulously talented pre-college musicians in the fall season, so it is touched by a sense of youthful discovery along with the feelings that arise as summer turns towards winter. There is some wordplay behind the narrative of the piece as well — “fall” suggests not only a time of year but also a descent from one world into another.

The first movement, “Fall from Grace,” begins with only the purest of intervals and natural string harmonics, but as more pitches are added, a pentatonic scale and some faint allusions to “Amazing Grace” emerge. Adding still more pitches inevitably leads to the discovery of the tritone interval, that “devil in music.” Along with that discovery comes a gradual transformation from the initial mysterious other-worldly atmosphere to the rough and violent music which ends the first movement.

The second movement, “Turning Colors/Harvest Hymn/ Harvest Dance,” portrays a different kind of transformation. Material borrowed from Debussy’s Prelude “Feuilles mortes” (fallen leaves) is presented with an aura of progressive change which leads to the Harvest Hymn, presented by the piano over the strings’ color-shifting background.  The strings respond with a Harvest Dance, a robust celebration spiked with bits of Vivaldian autumn. When the dance begins to careen out of control the hymn returns, mixed with echoes of the Debussy prelude and the pristine music of the spheres.