Straussian Landscapes

Martha Callison Horst

2016

Wind ensemble

The work was written at the request of Symphony Number One of Baltimore as a result of winning their 2015 Call for Scores Competition. The instrumentation for Straussian Landscapes directly mirrors the instrumentation of Richard Strauss' late works for wind ensemble (TrV 288 and 291). It uses snippets and textures from Strauss’s operas and orchestral tone poems to create entirely new musical landscapes of sound. The work falls into three sections, which are all performed in succession. The first, Night Birds, begins with undulating low orchestral wind texture inspired by Nacht from Strauss’ Alpine Symphony. A middle interlude featuring a chorale of Straussian harmonies for french horns seques into the final section, Salome’s Kiss. This eleven minute dramatic movement is built entirely out of woodwind textures from one measure in the final scene of this opera.