Sonata for Horn and Piano - Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement, a reaction against turn-of-the-century expressionist philosophy. The New Objectivists emphasized realism and rejected expressionism's emphasis on subjective perception. In the case of music, this also meant rejecting Romanticism, the dominant paradigm since Beethoven's time. Hindemith developed a spectrum of greatest consonance to greatest dissonance, in contrast to the traditional strict binary in which dissonance must resolve directly to consonance. For his more dissonant sound, the Nazis banned Hindemith's music in 1936. Fortunately, Hindemith fled Germany for Switzerland where in 1939 he wrote the horn sonata, first in what would become a series of sonatas for all the brass instruments. In 1940 Hindemith arrived in the United States and started to teach composition at Yale.

Fitting for a sonata, the first movement is in 4/4 and its central tone is F. While stereotypical sonatas feature a secondary theme in the dominant, this movement's two secondary organizing tones are A and D-flat, each a major third away from F. The movement consists largely of two- or three-phrase-long ideas played in F in the introduction, then organized around A or D-flat in the middle section, and finally a recapitulation of the original theme in the coda. The melodic fifth (and its inversion, the fourth) features heavily in the motivic constructions, creating more angular lines with heavier use of accidentals than traditional methods of composition would produce.

The second movement, in keeping with typical sonata structure, is in triple meter and its slower, more contemplative mood contrasts the high energy of the outer movements. Organized around the pitch D, this movement's main motif is built around melodic ascending perfect fourths. Interestingly, the movement's climax is tonal, arriving on a simple E-major chord, after which Hindemith quickly recapitulates the main theme and modulates back to D, closing the movement.

The last movement, still in triple meter (a departure from the norm for sonatas, which often feature rondos, themes and variations, or sonata-allegro form for the last movement), returns to high energy after the second movement's contemplative music. While the first two movements are built around intervals of fourths and fifths, this movement features the octave. The movement starts with a dramatic F octave in the horn, which returns motivically with many modulations to punctuate formal sections. The next octave statements, on D-flat and rhythmically modulated, come just before a slower 6/8 section in A. At the conclusion of this Langsam section, the octave returns on G, quickly reaching several succeeding octaves ascending chromatically in the next phrase. At the very end of the movement, F-octave statements resolve the harmonic development of this interval across the movement with powerful finality.

Ballade for Horn and Piano - Isabelle Pearson

Isabelle Pearson finished her master's degree at JMU last May. She wrote this piece at my request for a performance that had to be postponed. Pearson loves the outdoors, and it comes across in this music. Its broad, sweeping lines in major keys recall mountain or prairie landscapes on a sunny day, and its simplicity both showcase the performer's own sound and recalls the uncomplicated beauty of the view from a mountain. Interestingly, the piece starts in D, modulates to A, and then ends without returning to D, which would be typical for the harmonic language Pearson here uses. Pearson thinks of a narrative in the music, although her own notes describe it as unclear. Hence the incomplete harmonic shape: an unclear narrative does not resolve neatly.

Élégie - Francis Poulenc

An elegy is a work expressing sorrow over a death. Poulenc composed this work in memory of Denis Brain, one of the 20th century's most revered horn players, who died in a car crash in 1957 at age 36. Unique in Poulenc's oeuvre, the horn writing includes atonal technique: it starts off with a tone row, in which all 12 distinct notes must be played before any one of them may repeat. The piano writing grounds the listener in a more recognizable harmonic idiom reminiscent of Poulenc's other work. Poulenc contrasts two aggressive, fast sections in the opening with slower, mournful, discordant melodies in the middle. The closing moments feature accented horn arpeggios imitating church funeral bells, contrasting the earlier strident elements with reassuring C and G-major triads. At the last, the music finally comes to terms with the pain of Brain's death.

Primitive Modern - James Beckel

James Beckel was the principal trombone of the Indianapolis Symphony from 1969 until he retired in 2018. He is also a well-known composer (his works include The Glass Bead Game and Memoirs in Time). This particular composition belies his expertise in brass playing, as the writing is effective for the horn both technically and sonically.

Primitive Modern, written in 2002, explores the contrast between modern technological society and the primitive ancestral environment from which all our instincts are evolved. To this end, Beckel uses an electronic backing tape, allowing for a wide variety of sound effects and instrumental texture.

The music begins with loosely-rhythmic naturalistic sounds such as imitation wolf howls and bird song, but progresses over time through higher and higher technological levels. The backing starts with simple percussion, eventually introducing marimba, plucked strings, and even keyboard sounds. The primitive percussion instruments play syncopated rhythms which clearly draw influence from the 20th-century popular music genres, but the melodies are largely drawn straight out of the harmonic series, imitating early brass instruments.

Over the course of the piece, the music introduces more modern techniques such as metric modulation and mixed meter, and the melody becomes increasingly chromatic, including large melodic intervals iteratively narrowing by half-steps. But at the very end, Beckel brings back primitive dance material; his own notes state the "perhaps... we haven't evolved that far from our caveman ancestors."

Berceuse - Jean-Michel Damase

Jean-Michel Damase was born in 1928 and died in 2013. This piece was written in 1951, very early in his career. In contrast to many of the other works on the program, this music is basically tonal, although it has interesting moments where the same pitch plays different roles as chords change around it. Its overall mood is peaceful and relaxed—fitting for a berceuse, which simply means "lullaby."

The melodic material is almost vocal in quality. Damase uses primarily stepwise motion, although the opening theme begins with a melodic fifth. Much of the material involves neighbor-tones, which Damase alters chromatically in a quasi-development phase to move smoothly through distantly related keys. Typical for a tonal piece, Damase restates the original theme in F to the end.