Eine Klezmer Nachtmusik

This piece had a strange starting point. I had been commissioned to write  a large –scale piece for John Delorey for the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Men’s Glee Club (see El Limonar Florido) and John had asked me to include some instrumental parts since a few instrumentalists were to accompany the choir on their tour of Spain after the premiere in Worcester, MA in February 2005. After I settled on the texts by Machado for El Limonar I really only felt that violin and cello were going to work for me as instruments on that piece. John was a tiny bit disappointed that there were no clarinet or trombone parts for those folks to play but then he realized that this grouping of instruments is a bit odd! So we decided that I would write a second (little ) piece just for the instrumentalists. The clarinet element made me think of klezmer music and I really thought it would be great fun to do something in that style. So I spent a bunch of hours with klezmer music playing in the background while I was working at the computer just to soak up the style. The title refers to the fact that I have snuck some Mozart quotes into the piece, including a few bars where two themes are playing in two different meters a la Charles Ives. All in all, I do enjoy writing fun music!