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Work

A Garden for Orpheus (octets: oboe, horn, percussion, guitar, harp, viola, cello, double bass)

by Elliott Gyger (1999)

Score Sample

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Audio Sample

Performance by Fromm Players, Jeff Milarsky from the CD Chamber music

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Chamber music

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This item is not commercially available from the Australian Music Centre. We regret that we cannot offer it for sale.

CD

Chamber music : live recordings, 1995-2003 / Elliott Gyger.

Library shelf no. CD 1525 [Available for loan]

garden for Orpheus

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Score

A garden for Orpheus / by Elliott Gyger.

Library shelf no. 785.5218/GYG 1 [Available for loan]

Display all products featuring this work (1 more)  

Work Overview

A Garden for Orpheus takes its title from a line drawing by Paul Klee. However, I also had in mind the numerous musical treatments of the Orpheus myth, and three in particular from the last thirty years: Birtwistle's mighty opera The Mask of Orpheus and its various satellite works; Henze's sombre a cappella choral cycle Orpheus behind the wire; and, perhaps most directly, Carter's setting of John Ashbery's Orpheus poem Syringa.

Although no attempt is made in A Garden for Orpheus to illustrate the events of the myth, several characteristics of the music may be heard as appropriately "Orphic". These include the prominent role of plucked string sounds (Orpheus' lyre); a tendency toward eloquent lamentation, focused particularly on the sound of the oboe d'amore; and the intimation, especially in the second of the two movements, of violent tragedy.

The ensemble is divided into two groups: a tenor-register trio (horn, guitar and cello), and a quintet (oboe d'amore, percussion, harp, viola and bass). This partition emerges gradually over the first half of the first movement, after which the trio takes on the role of a virtuosic concertino group. The partition begins to dissolve immediately in the second movement, however, as ideas from the first movement are recalled and developed more freely across the whole ensemble. The soloistic role passes from the trio to the quintet, whose members assert their individuality in a series of cadenzas over the course of the movement. The musical material for the entire work grows out of the resonant plucked chords of the opening, each of which pursues an independent trajectory to arrive at the coda one octave higher.

Work Details

Year: 1999

Instrumentation: Oboe d'amore in A, horn in F, percussion (1 player), guitar, harp, viola, cello, double bass.

Duration: 18 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Professional.

Contents note: In 2 movements.

First performance: 23 Mar 03. Merkin Hall, New York, USA

Performances of this work

21 May 2018: at Elliott Gyger at 50 (Melbourne Recital Centre, Primrose Potter Salon). Featuring Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (MCM) New Music Ensemble.

23 Mar 03: Merkin Hall, New York, USA

7 May 99: Paine Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass, USA. Featuring Fromm Players, Jeff Milarsky.

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