Tuesday, March 20, 2018

New Music for Woodwind Trio

After writing "A Little Drama for Woodwind Trio" I found that it isn't common at all to have clarinet, English horn, and piccolo together in a woodwind trio. There are a small number of trios for flute, oboe, and clarinet, and I found a few of them in the IMSLP: a set of pieces by Martin Hill and The Reunion Trio by Joseph Nicholas Fried. On YouTube I found performances of the Divertimento by Malcolm Arnold, and a trio by Michael Kibbe, but none of these pieces use English horn and piccolo together with the clarinet.

Here's my addition to the repertoire:



I have a computer-generated recording of "A Little Drama for Woodwind Trio" to share here, and you can get the music on this page of the IMSLP.

In my virtual travels I found A Survey of Literature for the Oboe and English Horn, a 1959 dissertation by Virginia Downing Snodgrass, which I found interesting, and thorough. I can say with some authority that prior to 1959 (the year of my birth!) there was nothing in the published literature that used piccolo, English Horn, and clarinet together in a trio.

I would love to have this list augmented! If you know of any other pieces for the combination of flute (doubling piccolo), oboe (doubling English horn), and B-flat clarinet, please list them (with links, if possible) in the comments!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A clever and lovely little work. When your friends to whom it is dedicated perform it, it would be nice to see that posted. Best wishes as the coffee is smelled.

Lok said...

This was delightful! Thank you for making + sharing