The Mirecourt Trio Commissions

Concerto Dies Irae
for Piano Trio and
Wind Ensemble
(1982-83)

Paul Reale

Concerto Dies Irae was written for the Mirecourt Trio through a grant from the Jerome Foundation, and it was premiered by the Trio at the Green Lake Festival of Music in July of 1982. The piece is the third collaboration with members of that group and the largest and most complex project that I have completed in the medium. It also represents a strong aesthetic position with regard to the place and import of new music in that it is the result of a practical dialogue between composer and perfomers. I have tried to use the idea of a concerto as a performance vehicle, and as a springboard for a challenging, yet accessible piece in the tradition of concertos of past composers.

Musical materials are all original except for the Dies Irae plainchant, which functions as a cantus firmus to the other themes; however, the spirit of the materials is very much in the world of tonal music used in an almost cinematic and nontraditional way. In fact, most of my music in the last ten years uses tuneful melodies, some with stylistic associations and some with novel developments of the triadic harmonic language. I would go so far as to say that the piece is designed so that the average concertgoer is able to follow the progress of the themes, even though they undergo bizarre and surrealistic fragmentation.

The piece is divided into three large sections which correspond roughly to three movements, and there is thematic material which is unique to each of the sections. Simultaneously, the materials combine as the piece progresses, since all of the materials have some association with the Dies Irae motif (if only in terms of the reordering of pitches in the chant). The piece also divides into two large sections in that the introduction to the main theme of the first section reoccurs as the introduction to the combination of the first and second section themes in the middle of the extended slow section. This introduction also uses the pitches of the opening of Dies Irae, but in modified order so that the harmonic contour of the pitches is altered. The overall impression is a gradual revelation of the Dies Irae in relief to a fabric of thematic complexes, most obvious for the first time in the end of the violin cadenza. The motivation for my choice of this plainchant is that it has conspicuous associations with the world of spirits and the unseen, a pervasive demonic intrusion in an otherwise carefree and lighthearted thematic landscape.

While traditional sounding materials are used throughout, the development and overlay of the materials gives more the impression of a kaleidoscopic mosaic, the pieces of which are constantly shattered and rearranged, much in the manner employed by the cubist painters or new-wave film makers. Each theme is almost a character in the dramatic sense, and each of the soloists temporarily assumes the persona of that character in the elaboration of the thematic complexes. The emotional range of the concerto is intended to be extremely wide, from the broadly humorous to the most grave; sometimes the moods are practically in juxtaposition. In this respect, the concerto attempts to be dramatic in the tradition of the Mozart piano concertos, which project to the audience as miniature operas with a full complement of heroes, villains, and buffoons.

Paul Reale
1983

< Back to The Mirecourt Trio Commissions

artist link:
www.minotaurz.com/minotaur