Quintet for Winds, Op.45 Andante

Robert Muczynski
Stanford Woodwind Quintet

Begins with very legato, melodic line in bassoon and horn. The bassoon plays a held note while the horn line creates a flowing line. After the first phrase, the horn line is replaced with a clarinet, in the same register, with the same note in the bassoon. This first section mainly stays in the same register, or lower, so it sort of has a muddy feel to it, combined with the pedal melody in the bassoon. The darker feel also it created from the tonality, which is more stagnate, not a lot of V-I and a lot of HC. This is also because the base makes up a large part of the texture because of its dynamic. The base also has a very stagnate rhythm, a constant descending line in the bassoon part of do-te-le-sol, very dark sounding. The piece is very Aeolian sounding. None of the notes feel like they are being pulled in a particular direction, but the lines have their own unique beauty to them. The tonality itself is very evasive, but all the notes center around do in a natural minor scale. The clarinet line is a development line of the horn line. After the clarinet phrase, it is repeated, and at the same time, the flute enters, then the oboes, the horn, and the flute again. The instruments all have their own duet with the bassoon eventually, inbetween those all four instruments come together. Instead of using tonality as much, Mucyznski brings more and more voices together, or plays with the rhythm. The stem of this piece is definitely the Aeolian mode, because even at the end of phrases it maintains this loose whole step feel to it, put still maintains a pulse. It makes it sound very moody. I liked the piece. Because everything was so limited to this scale tonally, it ended up sounding all the more creative.