"Perpetuum Mobile" for 4 muted horns and tuba (1948) by Gunther Schuller

"Perpetuum Mobile" for 4 muted horns and tuba (1948)
by Gunther Schuller (USA)

Janie Berg, horn
Keyondra Price, horn
Samantha Benson, horn
Jeremy Moon, horn
Justin Worley, tuba

Performed live at Boston University's Tsai Performance Center
685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

on April 28, 2010

During the ALEA III concert: "Saxes and Horns".

The following note is provided by the composer:

“My Perpetuum Mobile is a lighthearted bagatelle, which I wrote in one afternoon in
1948 on a sudden whim. It was a novelty then - and maybe still is - since no one had ever written a piece entirely for muted horns, not to mention some of the jazz harmonies that flourished at the time in bebop jazz (with its famous 'flatted fifths') - which were, of course, nothing more than the tritone related bitonality heard in the music of Debussy and Ravel and a host of other turn-of-the-century composers.

What was also very unusual at the time - even daring - was to write a first horn part with a very high lying tessitura: thirty-one high F's, three F#'s (in horn study and exercise books F# wasn't even listed in the fingering charts.)

The piece was also my private little homage to two French composers, Francis Poulenc and Jean Françaix, whose music I admired greatly, even though stylistically their music was so different from my burgeoning twelve-tone stylings. It's what we call a “fun piece.”

This is a live archival recording.