composer

ONeal Douglas

Tapestry (2010)                              

PDF OF FULL SCORE

Michigan State University College of Music Honors Competition Winner, Premiered in December 3, 2008, by the Michigan State University Wind Symphony, Galen S, Karriker, Conductor

    As I was writing this music I was thinking about a title that best depicts what I was trying to accomplish with this work. Tapestry came to mind because of the different tonal colors I was imagining working with as a basis for the composition. My attempt was to “weave” these colors together, in a manner that would create some of my favorite sounds and textures, into a work for my favorite musical medium, the wind band. Tapestry can be divided into two sections, the first, a slow tone poem-like section, and the second a faster section. The main motivic ideas of the work are presented in the first slower section by solos or duos, piccolo and contra bass clarinet, English horn and bass clarinet duet, tuba solo, English horn solo, and tenor saxophone solo. These ideas are soon after developed and “inter-woven” together to create the many different colors and moods that give the work its suspenseful and aggressive character. The faster second section continues with intense statements developed from the main ideas, interspersed with some calmer sections. This alternation of calm and intense sections soon gives way to an intense rhythmic climax that pits a “loud and violent” timpani solo against a mono-rhythmic energetic wind statement based on one of the main motivic ideas of the work. The work then ends in a spirited coda type section building up momentum to a loud, emphatic, solo pedal
Bb in the bass trombone.