Frank Horvat
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Desert Scenes

Audio Clip: MP3 | Real Audio

 
   
Catalogue #: LT. 1
Composer: Frank Horvat
Year Composed: 1993
Instrumentation: Bassoon and Piano
Duration: 5 min
Score: Yes

Recording Information

Availability: Studio Demo
Date: December 1996
Location: University of Toronto Recording Studio
Musicians: Lisa Griffiths (Bassoon), Theresa Lin (Piano)
Producer/Engineer: Frank Horvat

Programme Notes...

I composed this piece when I was 18 years old, I felt obliged to enter a piece in the composition class of the local Kiwanis festival. I felt proud of my first "official" composition. When I attended my adjudication though, the presiding composer accused the piece of being "too ethnocentric". It took me a few years of expanding my musical horizons and further compositional experimentation to realize what he was talking about. What I had thought was authentic "Middle Eastern" influences was really just a western-19th century-romanticized-Scheherezade musical ideal.

But listening back on it, I'm not ashamed of the result. What I can also hear are lyrical melodies from the bassoon that convey a melancholy timbre. I also hear chord charges from minor to major and back to minor that creates subtle mood changes, somewhat reflective of the personality of that teenage composer back then.

- Frank Horvat, November 2006

 

 

 




 
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