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An Operatic Quintet
The characters of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte inspired the music of the Quintet for Winds. In fact, these characters inspired the music of almost every Italian comic opera from Mozart onward.
The disparate character of the members of the wind quintet themselves imply certain “stereotyped” characteristics. Although certainly not limited to one attribute, each instrument has, like a character in the Italian street theater, a defining characteristic: the “charming” flute (Columbina), the “despondent” oboe (Pierrot), the ‘acrobatic” clarinet (Arlecchino), the “heroic” horn (Il Capitano), and the “bumbling” bassoon (Il Dottore).
While not slavishly following the above descriptions for the music contained in the Quintet for Winds, I found myself thinking about Arlecchino as I wrote the athletic “Burlesque” of the first movement. Pierrot, lovesick, sings his woe in the second movement. Every Commedia performance included a pastoral love scene, and the “Pastorale” could represent the setting of some former romantic spring interlude, but the landscape now is desolate and frozen. The “Moto Perpetuo” features a rapidly moving “juggling” figure with other motives that are based on material from the previous movements. A strange little chorale (Harlequin’s Funeral) seems to end the work on a melancholy note, but in the coda and last gesture, Harlequin’s “death” seems but another dark joke.
