Program notes

The orchestration of the whole piece is very uniform because every line of the texture has its own beginning and ending. The audience can distinguish the different combinations of instruments because the timing of the instruments in each phrase start and end independent of each other. In the first movement, “Morning Died Away,” this has a two-note motive theme using major and minor second and diminishing fifth intervals from which everything develops. The most interesting thing about this movement is the ending of every phrase where we can hear the changes of color as instruments, in different combinations, break off their engagement with the piece.  The end of movement comes with a sudden breaking off in a tutti, and the “Morning Dies Away” with a clarinet drifting off through the air. 

In the second movement, “Echo of Pastoral,” the main melody is a mimicking of variations of the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and every rephrasing of the melody brings out the echoes and it also dies away during the echoes. The notes of the melody are continually echoed by the accompanying instruments, which are selectively assigned to echo particular notes. The echoes furthermore come assigned with different tempo marks wherein the whole movement is written completely without time signatures and bar lines. The orchestration continues with overlapping echoes, some always fading, while others materialize.  The whole movement creates the natural sound of the pastoral.

The third movement, “Rampant Flock,” starts with the rhythmic marimba and the oboe maintaining the echoes from the second movement, only now, it develops dramatic dynamics. The clarinet brings out a new two-note motive, which relates to the first movement but this time in the major seventh interval and later the minor ninth interval. The material of the third movement includes material from the first and second movements. The rhythm and the music become rampant and stormy. Then, suddenly, traditional structure ceases with the solo clarinet emerging along a whistling rainbow, which is the players as the vocals who take us to our dreamland. The function of the illusion of this section is necessary as it materializes a surprise for the audience.  Here we just dream a bit before returning. The harmony of the dreamland section is the opposite of the rampant section. The AEDA pitches are the main theme that keeps repeating and this time still in overlapping orchestration with overlapping individual notes. The coda of the third movement returns to the beginning of the movement where the piece ends with the each instrumental sound dying one by one.