Product Description
A work similar in style to Sinfonia No. I, but featuring a quick, dance-like conclusion (approximately three and one-half minutes in duration).
The pdf file contains score and parts.
The sound sample is an electronic preview.
The Sinfonias No. 1 and No. 2 were sketched in piano score format, probably no later than July of 1978, and thus correspond roughly to the period immediately during and after my graduation from Harvard the previous month. I had been under the spell of Monteverdi and Cavalli for some time, and had even planned an opera titled Epiphania for which these pieces were intended as overtures. The opera never materialized, and the pieces remained no more than pencil sketches until the fall of 2001, when I finalized their respective forms, revised the counterpoint, and completed orchestration.
The first follows an A A' B B' A plan and maintains a slow, dignified character throughout. The repeated A B C D structure of the second also begins maestoso, but concludes at a much faster, dance-like tempo in the parallel major. These short orchestral works in a seventeenth-century Italianate style may be performed as independent concert or liturgical pieces in the manner of overtures, interludes, or postludes. They may also be played one after the other because of their similar character and common tonality. Although neither poses significant technical demands, both have been invested with a depth and breadth of expression that call for mature taste and musicianship. The more demanding keyboard parts replicate and throw into clear relief the polyphony of the stringed orchestra (cf. the baroque continuo).
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