Brass Tacks

This three-movement work was composed for the Brass Act Quintet in 2016 (Stephen Ruppenthal, Trumpet 1), who premiered the music in 2018.

I. Two Short Fugues
This double fugue — each actually a fughetta — is written as an homage to both J.S. Bach and Bela Bartok.

II. More Questions (Still Unanswered)
This slow movement is an homage to Charles Ives. The paired trumpets, muted throughout, pose the various questions, synchronized with themselves but aesthetically detached from the low brass foundation.

III. Fugal Reflections
An homage to Guillaume de Machaut and George Crumb, this concluding movement — which includes a short fugue and a contrasting chorale — reflects off of the midpoint for a modified palindrome structure.

— Brian Belet

SCI Journal of Music Scores, Vol. 62. (Schott Music Corporation, 2022).

“Then he withdrew from them, about a stone’s throw away, and knelt down and prayed. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine.’ Then an angel appeared to him, coming from heaven to give him strength. In his anguish he prayed even more earnestly, and his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.” (Luke 22:41-44).

– Nathan Wilson Ball

The title Tuba Contra Mundum does not indicate paranoia, but rather a solo performer’s virtuosic exuberance, expressed through a mercurial range of emotions. The mood changes from phrase to phrase — lyrical, playful, forceful, wistful, joking, expansive, ferocious, furtive, jaunty, sinister — building to a climactic pitch held for as long as breath will last. A rising gesture spanning the entire range of the tuba culminates in several shrieks — perhaps there is some paranoia after all — and ultimately collapses into exhausted gasps.

Tuba Contra Mundum is published by Tuba-Euphonium Press.

— Janice Macaulay

I wrote this piece for the Menlo Brass Quintet. I chose the waltz form because of my love for the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes. The piece has a pleasant, traditional 3/4 waltz rhythm, with hemiolas at some cadences in homage to one of Brahms’ favorite gestures, but departs a little from the traditional form by having a distinct coda.

— L Peter Deutsch

This suite was inspired by the poem “There was set before me a mighty hill” by Stephen Crane (1871-1900), best known for his masterwork novel “The Red Badge of Courage.” The poem’s lines and the movements reflecting them, are as follows: “There was set before me a mighty hill (Toward the Mountains), And long days I climbed / Through regions of snow (Into the Mountains), When I had before me the summit-view, / It seemed that my labour / Had been to see gardens / Lying at impossible distances (Beyond the Mountains).”

— L Peter Deutsch

I first heard the 7-note subject of this cheerful and energetic Fuga a 4 in a dream, and was fortunate to remember it long enough to write it down when I awoke. I originally scored it for piano, but transcribed it for brass when working on a different piece with the Menlo Brass Quintet, and found I liked it much better in that instrumentation. It follows Baroque fugue style pretty strictly, except for two mischievous quirks: it is in 5/4 time, and it has a “blue note” in the next-to-last measure, which I included just to remind listeners what century it was written in.

— L Peter Deutsch

Andrew Lewinter composed music extensively as a young musician, but stopped composing music at age 17 when he turned his attention to playing the horn. After a 14-year career playing the horn as a performing orchestral musician and soloist, Lewinter began again to compose music. His first foray into composition as an adult was to write a sonata for horn and piano, which was fitting for someone who had devoted so much of himself to performing on the instrument.

The Sonata for Horn and Piano is a three-movement work in a decisively romantic style. The intervals of the first measure form the basis for the entire work, and much of the music in the rest of the piece is an outgrowth and development of those intervals. The last movement opens with a tongue-in-cheek skeletal version of the first movement theme, first played on the piano, and then rudely interrupted by a fortissimo horn rip. What follows is a theme and variations, which are interconnected and quasi-developmental.

Statement from the artist:

In 2016 I decided to start composing music. I wrote music as a kid but stopped after high school. Since I played the horn professionally for a lot of my life, the first goal I set for myself was to write a sonata for horn and piano. As a first project, I decided to extensively review theory, form, and counterpoint, using many books, scores, and a lifetime of playing and listening to classical music as my guides. My piece would use common practice harmony and standard classical forms, such as sonata-allegro form.

The Sonata for Horn and Piano that I composed was beautifully premiered by my friends Lydia Van Dreel and Sandy Holder at a Northwest Horn workshop in 2018, and later recorded by friends and great musicians, James Wilson and Katherine Ciscon. That terrific recording by Wilson and Ciscon is now available on this Navona Records release.

I am really fortunate that such great musicians recorded the piece that I wrote. Thank you also to Christian Schubert, who engineered the recording, as well as Bob Walp, who produced it.

After writing the Horn Sonata, I continued composing, and stuck with tonal harmony and standard classical forms, although my compositional style continues to develop. Tonal harmony is a musical language that allows me to express the widest range of emotions and western classical music’s traditional structures provide guide rails within which I can be creative.

At this point, I‘ve written more than a dozen multi-movement pieces of chamber music, and am forging ahead almost every day.

— Andrew Lewinter