Husa: Serenade for Wind Quintet, Strings, Harp and Xylophone (1963)

This piece was also performed by the chamber orchestra last semester. To be honest I found it kind of hard to access, but this is a good recording and very lyrical and takes the necessary time, and well-balanced to show off the important lines. These are the program notes I wrote for that concert.

Karel Husa's career as a composer took him from his birthplace, Prague, through Paris, where he studied with Arthur Honegger and Nadia Boulanger. In 1959 he became an American citizen and spent many years in Ithaca as a lecturer at both Cornell University and Ithaca College, retiring in 1992. His seldom-performed Serenade was composed in 1963, about a decade into his tenure at Cornell. In his later years Husa's music became increasingly atonal, but the mood of this fifteen-minute Serenade is, overall, bright and engaging. It was premiered by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 1964.

This work's unusual instrumentation is a diversification upon the original inspiration, a piece called Évocations de Slovaquie (Evocations of Slovakia) written for clarinet, viola, and cello in 1951. The three movements are named for the Slavic mountain, the night, and a lively folk dance; however, these titles are more symbolic than strictly programmatic. A largely serial work, the Serenade nevertheless employs inviting, plaintive tunes and driving rhythms inspired by Slavic folk music.

The serenade opens with a stark, jagged clarinet solo, and the rest of the first movement unfolds in mirror form, as if to mimic the shape of the movement's eponymous mountain. The first section is in a moderate 6/8 scored thinly for winds and harp; strings join in the second section, which is firmer and more regular in rhythm. The music accelerates into a more frenetic middle section, which then slows into abbreviated versions of the first two segments, ending with pointillistic series of pizzicati and harmonics in the strings.

The second movement is marked "tranquillo possibile" - as tranquil as possible. Long melodic wind lines mesh with muted strings until the mood is interrupted for a perturbed, agitated middle section marked by rapid, furious scales and aggressive pizzicati. The movement ends quietly, as it began. In the third movement, driving rhythms and articulations evoke a vigorous folk dance, which accelerates into a celebratory close.