Adopted Path

This work for chamber orchestra was written between January and June 2010 and takes Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken as its starting point. I was particularly attracted to the poem when I learnt that it was inspired by the vacillation expressed by his friend, the poet Edward Thomas when the two took walks in England during 1914. Indeed, Frost often reported that he would say to Thomas: “No matter which road you take, you’ll always sigh, and wish you’d taken another.” As I have been setting Thomas’s poetry since 1981 this link presented itself as appropriate for a work that would be premiered in New England.

Adopted Path begins with a long introduction during the second half of which two main ideas emerge: a melodic line on the cellos and a trudging motif in the bassoons. Eventually it is this bassoon idea that initiates the main body of the piece, which consists of a series of contrasting episodes articulated by brief references to the cello line of the introduction but placed in the violin or flute parts. Such references are more fully exploited at the end of the work, where a solo violin offers fragments of three alternative ways the initial cello line might have developed.

Adopted Path was a Nathan Gottschalk Memorial Commission from Greenwood Music Camp and was premiered by the Greenwood Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Rous on 9 August 2010 in The New Barn, Greenwood.

Philip Grange