Mill Songs

Description

Oboe, Bassoon — Oboists and bassoonists have relatively little music to play in duet form that allows either instrument to sing.xa0 Most duet pieces are in canon or in counterpoint, with the result being a vague sense that “something is missing,” or “if only there were a piano part.”xa0 When Kristin Wolf-Jensen and John Snow approached me about writing a duo piece for them, my first determination was to make a piece that would allow each instrument to participate in full-throated song.Franz Schubert, considered by most people to be the best composer of art songs who ever lived, had a major birthday at the time of the commission – the 200th anniversary of his birth, in 1797, was being celebrated as I started work on this piece.xa0 It seemed fortuitous to combine my effort with a celebration of Schubert’s masterpiece, a piece I have loved since my teens.xa0 Die Schöne Müllerin, as everyone knows, tells in twenty songs the story of a young miller’s apprentice, and of his infatuation with the miller’s daughter.xa0 In the course of the cycle, we follow this naïve lad and his confidant, the brook, through a series of episodes depicting the growth of young love, the rejection of the lover in favor of someone else (the Hunter), and his suicide by drowning in his beloved brook..While it’s impossible without words to completely tell the story using only an oboe and a bassoon, the music itself can do a lot.xa0 I have chosen four pivotal songs that take the story from introduction (Wandering) to the primal question “does she love me?” (The Inquisitive Man), to the introduction of the rival (The Hunter) and the ultimate decision to destroy himself despite the brook’s pleading (The Miller and the Brook).xa0 Each movement preserves much of Schubert’s melodic and harmonic work, but adds a twentieth century perspective in the way Stravinsky “refocused” Pergolesi and Tschaikovsky in his ballets Pulcinella and The Fairy’s Kiss – square corners are rounded off, modulations are suddenly introduced, rhythms are altered, and (most importantly here), pianistic chordal writing is replaced by arpeggios and tremolos.xa0 The result, I hope, is a bit like hearing these four songs sung by a singer – with the added dimension of woodwind virtuosity.