Eine Kleine Posaunenmusik - Trombone and Piano

For trombone and orchestra (piano reduction).

Eine Kleine Posaunenmusik (A Little Trombone Music) was commissioned by and written for John Swallow and premiered by him in 1980 at Yale’s Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

The three middle movements carry the subtitles Recitative, Scherzo, and Chorale respectively, offering clear clues to the character and mood of those sections. The first movement is purposefully somewhat mercurial and introductory in character and continuity, but is held together by the refrain-like return of the opening D-minor idea. Constantly “searching,” it leads on each return to different musical conclusions.

The fifth (last) movement functions as a balancing symmetrical counterweight to the opening movement, also as a lively concluding postlude to the previous Chorale movement.

In addition it provides the concerto’s single opportunity for a solo cadenza.

—Gunther Schuller