Ticheli 1

Recording: University of Miami Symphony Orchestra

    Just gotta get through this today... got a splitting headache. So this might seem an odd choice to end first symphony week, but Frank Ticheli may have been one of the more influential composers to me and a number of other people who are around my age who grew up playing in wind ensembles in the 90s and 00s. I was actually curious to check out the first symphony cause I hadn't seen a recording of it until now, as a lot of wind ensemble composer's orchestral music doesn't get recorded. Also I don't think I've found a recording of Maslanka 1, which would've been my other choice.

    Anyways, The first movement, Of Youth, has extensive use of bell-like open harmonies. The winds are the dominant texture for much of the movement, and the strings are almost used like a single instrument to respond to the winds. The middle of the movement has a wistful, nostalgic feel to it. Appropriately, the movement feels drifting and aimless for much of it, which in many situations would be a criticism, but it works to paint a picture of youth in this movement. The end of the movement is a little fanfare-y though, which seems off a bit to me.

    The second movement exemplifies my favorite part about Ticheli's writing, his ability to write almost perfectly constructed slow movements from a tension standpoint. Rest is probably the best example of this, but this movement, Of Wisdom, also has a very carefully constructed build in tension throughout the movement. Just when the building tension becomes almost unbearable, it breaks in to the climax, and then it steadily calms itself down to the end of the movement, equally as controlled as the build was.

    This movement might be some of my favorite fast Ticheli writing. This movement, Profanation, sounds like a less refined version of his normal style of faster writing with just a few rough edges that makes it more exciting to me. Sometimes his faster writing can come across as a little sterile to me nowadays, but I don't feel that here. Some interesting orchestrational things, to me at least, are the use of the piano doublings for texture, and the use of the horn section towards the end, the latter of which reminds me of Peter and the Wolf's horn section for some reason. I don't feel like looking more in to that right now, cause I just want to get this done.

    This movement, Prayer, strikes me as a Copland-esque. It trades off between string solos over the winds and a male vocal soloist. I may need to revisit this movement cause my headache was not doing me any favors here, as even on my best days I have a hard time understanding lyrics. Overall this movement struck me as a heroic version of the second movement with a vocalist. Which I kind of wanted more out of it than that, but I'm fully willing to admit that it may be more due to my condition than the work itself, I'll have to give it another shot.

    No Wrap up and no preview, I'll be back tomorrow though.