This blogpost is a short commentary on my new quintet for winds. Click here for the Youtube video.

The Variations were not my first attempt to write for wind instruments, but it is my first finished work for winds. (I had previously attempted solo pieces for oboe and bassoon, and “sonata”-like pieces for oboe and piano. I did not think any of these could have been successful, and so I have discarded all such fragments). The piece bears the subtitle Small Steps and Giant Leaps, primarily because the foundation of the whole piece is the main theme of John Coltrane’s famous piece Giant Steps. The subtitle also plays on Neil Armstrong’s famous words “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” One could interpret this as representative of the fact that the quintet is my first completed work for winds, and hence it represents an important new step in my compositional development. At the risk of disappointing music analysts, the real reason is much more mundane. I think it is simply a rather cool title. If one has to interpret it, then I can offer the following suggestion: I tend to write melodic lines with large jumps, while the Giant Steps theme heavily features steps of major and minor thirds. It is the combination of these steps and leaps that characterise much of the material in this piece.

On the concept of ‘variation’

If you take a look at my Youtube channel, you will find other attempts at variation form. Perhaps the best one preceding the wind quintet is the Intermezzo festivo for string quartet. However, that piece follows the classical variation form more closely than the wind quintet, at least initially. (The piece transitions into a freer form halfway through). In the quintet, the Giant Steps theme does not appear until the very end of the work. This is in opposition to the classical form, where one hears the theme at the beginning, and then follow the variations. In this sense, even Arnold Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra (Op. 31) is classical, although the ways in which he varies the theme are of course more intricate and abstract than what is generally encountered in pre-20th century works. How, then, is my quintet a set of variations? Although the score is divided into sections which may indeed be identified with particular variations, it is not obvious (or at least it is not supposed to be obvious) how they are variations of a theme, which is not explicitly stated until the end anyway. Here, the word ‘variation’ conveys a much more general principle, which I think is similar to the term developing variation, often used in connection with Brahms. Another term I like is thematische Arbeit, or ‘thematic working’, which is often attributed to Joseph Haydn. I think the second term is more flexible, and hence easier to appropriate into a modern context. The general recipe is to start with a basic idea (the simpler the better), and see how much can be generated from it. Then introduce some embellishments, pertubations, variations — this produces a new but related idea. Now consider variations of this second idea, and so on. Of course, this process can happen in a nonlinear way. Moreover, the basic idea need not be a melodic fragment (although this is often a natural choice), but it can be something rather abstract. In my quintet, the basic idea, or Ursatz (a gross misuse of a term from Schenkerian analysis), consists of the following pair of elements:

The chord is comprised of the opening bass notes, while the second element is first five notes of the melody in Giant Steps. Observe that both elements coincidentally contain five notes, which is perfect for a quintet. An important secondary idea is the following voice-leading pattern, also featuring extensively in the melodic line of Giant Steps:

These two ideas comprise the essence of my wind quintet. I noted above that my use of the term Ursatz is a gross misrepresentation. In Schenkerian analysis, the Ursatz is supposed to be the fundamental structure of the entire piece — to put it facetiously, this means that “all of classical music is essentially the chord progression I-V-I.” However, in my current compositional process, the basic idea only needs to affect the ‘surface’ of the piece, and it does not necessarily determine the large-scale structure. (Controlling large-scale structure remains one of my greatest challenges — you will notice that all the pieces I have written so far are quite short). The fact that the elements presented above do affect the large-scale structure of the wind quintet is the reason for the title Variations. These three elements are collectively the ‘theme’ of the composition.

Remarks on the structure

I will offer some comments on the structure of the quintet that may be helpful for both players and listeners. It is easily observed that each variation features one of the instruments of the quintet. The order of appearance is: flute, clarinet, oboe, horn, bassoon. After these five variations, there is a fugal variation, which leads into the coda, where the Giant Steps theme is finally present. The way the variations are organised suggests an embedded multi-movement structure. One possible partition of the piece into movements is as follows:

• 1st movement: introduction, flute variation, clarinet variation (“Scherzo”)
• 2nd movement: oboe variation (“Adagio”), horn variation, bassoon variation (“Cadenza”)
• 3rd movement (Finale): fugue, Giant Steps coda

Notice also that the bassoon “cadenza” recalls material from the introduction (namely, the staggered chord-building entries).