• Gunther Schuller
  • Tre invenzioni for Chamber Ensembles (1972)

  • Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)
  • Five groups, without strings, drawn from: pic.fl.ob.Ebcl.cl II: ca.bcl.asx.bn.cbn III: pic tpt.2tpt.tbn.btbn IV: 2hn.fluegel.bar.tba V: hp.kbd.glock.cel.hpd.pf
  • 18 min

Programme Note

Composer Note:
Whether in music, painting or architecture, Tre Invenzioni is one of several works reflecting my long-standing interest in the Italian Renaissance. The word Invenzione is here used in the general sense in which it was often used in the Renaissance: freely conceived musical “inventions” that did not correspond to some already established musical forms. The work is written for twenty-five players divided into five quintets: a high woodwind group, a low woodwind group, a high (bright-timbred) brass group, a low (dark-timbred) brass group, and lastly a keyboard group (including harp). These instrumental groupings—spatially separated on stage—offer many opportunities for registral, timbral, rhythmic, and textural “conversations” and dialogues betwixt and among the group.

The three movements are contrasting in character: the first, mercurial, agitated, unpredictable; the second with a broadly sustained contrasting intensity; the third, basically vivacious, virtuosic but containing several quieter, lyrical interludes. The three movements are subtitled, respectively: Capriccio, Chorale, Toccata.

— Gunther Schuller

Scores