Sinfonietta (1989)

Orchestra 18 – min.
Publisher: Lauren Keiser Music Publishing

[2fl+picc.2ob.2cl+bcl.1asax.2bn. / 3tpt.4hn.3tbn.1tba. / 3perc(3=timp). / pno. / str.]

Audio

Score (Free Download)

Program Note

My Sinfonietta (1989) emulates its namesake — the Sinfonietta of Leos Janacek —  in a number of ways. Both pieces use folk-like ideas to provide material that is sharply-profiled and direct (although my own “folk” roots are very different from Janacek’s, and  I define them broadly enough to include swing and rock-and-roll). Both pieces are comprised of an irregular number of short sections, each section with its own strongly independent melodic and rhythmic personality, with some occasional cyclical references. In both pieces, the form, though superficially episodic, is designed to create an eventual integrity, a culminating synthesis. My fascination with this formal phenomenon of small sections or pieces accumulating into a larger continuum spans three decades, and arises from an early realization that many of the pieces I love for their continual freshness and uncompromised vitality fall into this formal category — Schumann’s Papillons, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, to mention a few. Although I don’t believe one can postulate a demonstrable analytical system for how these forms are constructed, there must be a definite design of what I call “psycho-informational vectors” in the way the various sections are created, articulated, and arrayed. In other words, the composer creates with purposefulness and playfulness an engagingly winding, zig-zagging but nonetheless directional path of varied perceptual attitudes for the listener.

Ultimately, I might be better advised to ask the listeners to ignore all the above; I simply hope that they will find in the tunes and characters and shapes and surprises of my Sinfonietta some of the same delight and emotional resonance I have found in the tunes, characters, shapes and surprises of Janacek’s score.