Drammatico e maestoso
Adagio e grazioso
Rondo pop

The Concerto for Oboe and Five Instruments was commissioned by Speculum Musicae. It was written at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and finished at the American Academy in Rome in July 1988.

The work is in three movement of a neo-Classic caste–fast-slow-fast. Unlike the typical concerto, the solo instrument here plays the role of mediator: It is the strings that are concerted against the piano. In addition a common developmental characteristic occurs in each of the movements: thematic “role reversal” of the strings and the piano. For instance, the opening octaves in the strings return as octaves in the piano in the recapitulation of the first movement.

The first movement is marked “Drammatico e maestoso,” the second “Adagio e grazioso,” and the third “Rondo pop.” The entire work, and especially the second movement, contains Ivesian juxtapositions of different music. These are unified by constant reference to one hexachord used as a mode centering around the “key” of d minor. The “key,” or mode, contains many obvious inflections of the blues and much American popular music. The effect of collage is also controlled by large polyrhythmic structures that denote phrase and section articulations. The last movement in particular has a very rock-influenced rhythm.

Bibliography: Bell, Larry. “Some Remarks on the New Tonality,” Contemporary Music Review, vol. 6 part 2, 1992, pp. 42–47.