related works

alito, gémito : for woodwind quartet / Lewis Nielson

Genre: Chamber music
Subgenre: Woodwind ensemble (2-12 players)
Scoring: fl ob cl fg

Aeolian Symmetries : for clarinet in B flat, cor anglais and bassoon / Danijel Legin

Genre: Chamber music
Subgenre: Woodwind ensemble (2-12 players)
Scoring: cl ob fg

Rondeau : for 3 woodwinds / Fania Chapiro

Genre: Chamber music
Subgenre: Woodwind ensemble (2-12 players)
Scoring: cl ob fg

Sonata a tre : opus 59, voor fluit, Engelse hoorn en fagot, 1957 / Lex van Delden

Genre: Chamber music
Subgenre: Woodwind ensemble (2-12 players)
Scoring: fl eh fg

composition

alito, gémito : for woodwind quartet / Lewis Nielson

Other authors:
Nielson, Lewis (Composer)
Description:
alito, gémito is Italian for breathe, groan. I do not mean or intend any programmaticism by this; the progress and structure of the work, while open to a large number of interpretations (pictorial or literary), is not based on any particular event, object, or artifact. Like most of my recent pieces, this work is about the transformation of abstract material from one kind of sound into (and out of) another. The first movement, (Aequisonus), I, dedicated to my dear friend and spiritual father Richard Hoffmann, compresses and expands the pitch content of Schubert’s profound lied “Der Lindenbaum” from Die Winterreise. The concept of doing this stems from Richard’s incredible Memento Mori, although the actual processes are all my own. One should attend, however, to the sound in being and not interpolate all of the harmonic motions from the “source” (if that is even the right word), many of which are heavily veiled. Movement II (Quid es musica), the first composed work, is dedicated to my admired friend, William Davis. All parts are intrinsically related in pitch to each other for this movement and throughout the entire work but the almost total focus is on the transformation of these relations through the use of unconventional tone production rather than pitch obscures the more conventional structure, creating a new one based almost entirely mutating strands of lightly pitched contours and shadow sounds. The performers must be very sensitive to the gradations of sound far more than mere pitch accuracy or absolute constancy of rhythm. This kind of thinking about music has become a key feature of most of my recent works, part of a continuing process of integrating a constantly submerging pitch structure with a more dominant timbre focus, a process notable in almost everything I have written since 1991 but most clearly manifest in the Gargantuan bassoon solo Around…Among…Within of 1999, also written for Bill Davis.
Lewis Nielson