Night Music
(1968) — for chamber orchestra
Duration: 18'
1(pic).201/2000/str
Commissioned by the BBC

World Premiere: 24 October 1969, Cardiff
BBC Welsh Orchestra
John Carewe, conductor

Publisher:  Chester Music Ltd

Critical Acclaim:

The work is...a continuous movement for chamber orchestra with specially prominent parts for two horns — a continuation, Miss Musgrave says, of her series of works using and extending the traditional concerto principle. It is a strong shapely piece..(it) avowedly has no programme, but her vivid graphic writing invites description in emotive adjectives. Music, in fact, underlaid by strong feeling, and also lucidly laid out; not a big work, but another notable token of her originality and distinction of thought.
— Stanley Sadie, The Times (London)

The finished Musgrave product has a fully developed personality of its own. Furtive and wispy at first, then richly lyrical, even passionate, and ultimately scurrying, it strikes me as being about all sorts of things that happen at night.
— Arthur Bloomfield, San Francisco Examiner

Composer's Note:

In this work, the two horn players are featured in a soloistic and dramatic way. Contrasting musical ideas are explored dependent on where they are seated in the orchestra — more lyrical when they are seated close together, more dramatic later on, when they stand either side of the conductor at some distance from each other, and then near the end the musical contrasts are further heightened by the echo effects produced by one distant offstage horn.

As so often in dreams there are quickly changing moods; (frightening, eerie, peaceful, romantic, stormy), and so in this work highly contrasted musical sections quickly follow on from each other, they interchange and even at times overlap.

The dream landscape painted in Night Music is thus in one continuous movement. The different sections which indicate the changing moods are: Andante Notturnale: / Misterioso: / Svegliato: (waking up) / Andante Amoroso..piu mosso, con ardore: / Appassionato: / Calmo: (Here the two horns move to their new positions either side of the conductor) / Minaccevole: (threatening) / Tempestuoso: (Here the first horn moves offstage) / Tempo di Andante amoroso alternating with Scherzoso: / Tempo di Andante.

Recordings:

Night Music
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Nicholas Kraemer, conductor
Collins Classics 1529-2
MNC Ancora series 1529-2
———
London Sinfonietta
Frederick Prausnitz, conductor
Barry Tuckwell and Anthoyn Chidell, horns
LP Argo ZRG 702

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