Desert Scenes

Programme Notes

I composed this piece when I was 18 years old, feeling compelled to submit something for the composition class at the local Kiwanis festival. I was proud of my first “official” composition. However, when I attended my adjudication, the presiding composer criticized the piece as being “too ethnocentric.” It took me a few years of broadening my musical horizons and experimenting further with composition to understand what he meant. What I had believed to be authentic “Middle Eastern” influences was, in fact, a Western, 19th-century, romanticized Scheherazade musical ideal.

Listening back now, I’m not ashamed of the result. I can hear lyrical bassoon melodies that convey a melancholic timbre. I also notice the subtle mood shifts created by the chord progressions from minor to major and back again—an emotional ebb and flow that reflects the personality of that teenage composer.

– Frank Horvat, November 2006