 Opus Tour  |
The musical compositions of Richard Burdick |
Opus 91: |
Night Hawk for Trumpet and Organ |
Written for Rizetto and Rosas summer 1995 |
| Premiered December 29, 1995 on Trinity Chamber Concerts, Berkeley, CA |
Written for the Duo Rizzetto and Rozas, this work is titled because of the second movement. |
Originally I had planned to use a tape
loop delay set-up with a localized microphone just for the trumpet. Because of
the ease of using the two instruments without electronics, I chose not to use
the tape. Instead what I have done is plotted out the solo trumpet part plus
three echoes and given the solo player all attacks generated by the four part
fugue. I used grace notes when ever two notes would have happen at once, dynamic
contrasts help define the echoes but this version makes the trumpet part much
more virtuosic. The phrasing is an arbitrary set of phrases from one to five
bars long and sometimes backwards. A melody was used but is not arrived at until
the last. One note of the melody appears and with each repetition one more note
is added. Two modes are used, one in the 9/8 and one in the 10/8 time
signatures. The contrast between the two different meters in the same amount of
time is a main emphasis of the piece. |
Originally I wanted to write four movements, but I
am happy with the three. The first movement in minuet trio form was written at
the Bear Valley festival in August 1995. It uses the melody of the 2nd movement.
I was striving for three contrasting repetitions of a continuation of the
trumpet note in the organ, which I never really accomplished. |
The first version of the last movement, originally
planned to be the first, was too monotonous for my taste, in that we traveled
through four modulations of the same material in the organ with an almost
improvisatory trumpet part on top. The rhythmic material in the organ is again
the same melody form from the second movement put in a pattern where the harmony
increases and then put into forward or retrograde motion based on the pattern
used for phrasing of the second movement. The scale then is stated in the organ
pedals and is of primary importance to me in the movement. The final version of
the third movement is just cut in half. Within the four modulations we hear the
first part of the first and third keys and the second half of the second and
fourth modulations. |
This work is registered with ASCAP |