Quadruple Concerto

When I need to feel grounded in the ripe new music I’m trying to write, I take refuge in old things of all kinds. Not necessarily do I search for music or ideas to emulate, but it’s comforting to remind oneself that it’s all likely been done before. The multi-soloist expression – a little band joined (or supported, or genuflected, or coddled, or confronted, or swallowed whole) by the big band on stage behind them – is a very Old Thing. One can reflect on the Italian Baroque concerto, in which the ripieno (padding! by which we mean both the full orchestra and the music they provide) is crucial to the structure of the piece, or Mozart’s perfectly charming Sinfonia Concertante, so typically full of character to match the virtuosity flowing from the composer’s quill pen and into the musicians’ hands. And we may take note, when fretting over titles for our brand new Sinfonia Concertante con Ripieno, that Beethoven’s concerto for three equally essential hero-soloists gives rise to that most direct of opus-sobriquets: The Triple.

How easily “the Shepherd Quadruple” will roll off the tongue in the twenty third century is not for this author to say. But even if this piece’s connections to those Greats of the past is philosophical at best, then what I share with a great many concerto composers is a deep connection with my muses. My story with each of these Dallas Symphony Orchestra principals and brilliant soloists happened to begin somewhere else. Erin Hannigan and Gregory Raden premiered, several years back, a piece I wrote about melting glaciers. Their first notes of that piece, extremely high and soft, depicting a pristine, frozen wonderland, were played so beautifully at the first rehearsal, I have never forgotten the sound or the feeling. With David Buck and Ted Soluri our various stories of my music and their echt virtuosities go back years and decades, all the way to a piece called “Four Vinaigrettes,” in which a student-aged Dave played the most fiendishly difficult piece ever conceived by a twenty-two year old about tangy salad dressings.

Strolling Treble starts off as an intrada of sorts, with the ever-so-treble voice of the flute guiding things along as our path veers and meanders like a proper first movement should. Ganymede was, according to Homer, the “loveliest born of the race of mortals, and therefore the gods caught him away to themselves, to be Zeus' wine-pourer, for the sake of his beauty, so he might be among the immortals.” We may each decide for ourselves whether or not this is a happy outcome for the hero of the third movement, but that Ganymede, the gentle giant and largest of Jupiter’s 95 moons, may also be a beautiful and rich source for musical reflection isn’t lost on me. Heavy Machinery, will, I presume, reveal itself upon hearing as obvious enough.

In the end, the story of this piece is as simple as a joke-gone-serious. They are my Woodwind Dream Team, “wouldn’t it be terrific to write a piece for them?” I said once too often. And in that case, I’m surely in the oldest-yet-rarest of composer clubs. Lucky (lucky lucky lucky) me.

I dedicate this Quadruple Concerto to Dave, Erin, Greg and Ted with thanks to each for their ways of playing and their ways of being. And extend my gratitude to Maestro Luisi and to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for their generosities, both musical and extra-musical.

--SS.