Robert Hughes

Harpsichord and 11 Instruments

Notes from the Composer:

The diverse scenic situations of cinema offer a composer the opportunity to enjoy composing in a variety of styles. When Maestro Ramadanoff invited me to participate as the Composer-in-Residence this year I was extremely pleased that he welcomed my suggestion of Three Pieces in the Style of Mozart.  

These short, modest movements were assembled from diverse sources and then, for their Vallejo premiere, were orchestrated for wind dectet with a harpsichordist doubling on two tambourines. Eventually I couldn’t resist adding a small contrabassoon part (the instrument I usually play in the Vallejo Symphony).

The first movement, Allegro, was composed for the Disney movie Never Cry Wolf, where it can be heard to humorous advantage accompanying the scientist’s dinner of mice. My music, inspired by the wind octet dinner music in the last act of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, is performed in the film, for comic reasons, on a honky-tonk piano. Tonight’s Vallejo Symphony concert allows me to realize it as a wind ensemble piece according to my original intentions. The second piece, Adagio, was expanded to its present form from my Music for Salicia’s Dreams, an early chamber music work. The sensibility, transparency and 90% of the harmonic content of the third movement, Moderato, are in the style of Mozart. However, the salient “creative” part of the eclecticism is in the use of a lilting 7/8 meter, a time signature unknown in Mozart’s day but very much a part of our times.