Robert Bennett

Brass Quintet.
The composer's note from Tuesday evening, March 27, 1979, at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York City:Charlie Chaplin once gave us his recipe for comedy: think of the most ridiculous situation you can, and then direct and play it as though it were King Lear or Pelléas. Dead earnest and dead serious. Instrumental music that tries to be funny—scherzos, burlesques, humoresques—nearly always ends up being merely cheerful. The Arabesque is written to be cheerful and to show what five fine artists, unconcerned with what the trade calls “style,” can do when they read music.
Russell, as Bennett’s friends called him, had been a brass player himself, going back to his youth playing in his father’s band in Kansas City. So decades later, when he agreed to write a short piece for the American Brass Quintet (ABQ) in 1978, he brought a long history with brass instruments to the commission. It is likely that he, as he so often did, wrote it away from a piano. The written score of the 84-year-old composer shows no sign of his age, looking like the same handwriting as in his manuscripts from the 1920s.Robert Biddlecome, the now retired bass trombonist of the ABQ, thinks he was the contact person with Bennett in commissioning a new work for them. He said the ABQ had been in touch with Bennett several years earlier, hoping he would compose such a piece. In an email to the editors of this edition, first trumpeter Raymond Mase wrote, “I think the piece came up shortly before we played it, and we added it to the March program, since it wasn’t mentioned in [an] earlier ... fund-raising letter. But beyond that, we don’t seem to have any really solid info. I don’t recall that RRB came to a rehearsal or heard us play the piece before the premiere. Not sure whether we programmed it on the road after that since it came up late in the year and touring programs were submitted long before that.”We do, thanks to Mase, have the comment which appeared in the printed program for the premier, Tuesday evening, March 27, 1979, at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York City.Charlie Chaplin once gave us his recipe for comedy: think of the most ridiculous situation you can, and then direct and play it as though it were King Lear or Pelléas. Dead earnest and dead serious. Instrumental music that tries to be funny—scherzos, burlesques, humoresques—nearly always ends up being merely cheerful. The Arabesque is written to be cheerful and to show what five fine artists, unconcerned with what the trade calls “style,” can do when they read music.— Note by the composer

Add To Cart

Add To Estimate

Add to Wishlist