Zaimont: When Angels Speak for Wind Quintet [PARTS]

Code: JP5139
ISMN: 979-0-3019-0668-2

Mortals can only guess at the nature of heavenly discourse. What topics might angels address? Would all speak at once? Would words be used, or might feelings and emotions be preferred as vehicles of expression? Need earthly rules of logical argument prevail? Or, with all eternity in which to ruminate, might not circular reason, digressions, faulty analogies and so on be acceptable or, indeed, preferred?

While composing When Angels Speak in November and December of 1987 lying flat on my back, recuperating from a broken leg, I thought about these things. The resulting piece, an eleven-minute, one-movement work in four large sections, sometimes appears to move intuitively, but is in fact rigorously made. Everything in the piece derives from the music of the first two measures, a dotted rhythm followed by an ornament that curls in upon itself.

The piece was conceived as an ensemble work, using the five players almost all the time, as a miniature “band.” Its four sections annunciatory, playful/grotesque, lyric and a culminating three-segment “mad dance” are varied in character, tempi and rhythms, with many changing meters throughout.

This work for woodwind quintet is available only in manuscript. The first page of each part is displayed in the samples.

When Angels Speak has been recorded by the Manhattan Wind Quintet.

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