Uploaded November 2010 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
Roberto Gerhard, born in Tarragona in 1896, was a pupil of Felipe Pedrell, and has never lost (or despised) his gift for that picturesque style which stresses Spanish folk characteristics. But his works can preserve a subtle national flavor even when employing the more sophisticated technical resources he acquired during his study with Schönberg in 1925-28. Thus the Wind Quintet, written at the end of that period and four years after Schönberg's weighty essay in the medium, opens with a bassoon phrase that has the nonchalant rhythm of a folksong yet also establishes a seven-note row that is of crucial (though not, as in Schönberg, exclusive) importance throughout the first two movements. In the first, set against its inversion (oboe and clarinet, after the reiterated tutti chords), it also forms the second subject of a sonata scheme, but in the Andante (aba;c;aba;coda) it is constantly played off against its images in contrapuntal textures of extreme lucidity. The new theme (flute) of the Allegro giocoso, though also subject to quasi-serial transformations, demands a more harmonic accompaniment, while the trio, with an evocative echo of Spanish folk-song (oboe), finally transplants this serenade from Schönbergian territory. In the scherzoso finale, the refrain (oboe) and horn-call accompaniment piquantly dispute, rather than deny, tonalities; the central episode and the presto coda explore, with contrasted results, the conjunction of the refrain shape with the two "rows" of the earlier movements.
The members of The London Wind Quintet were Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Alan Civil (horn), Gareth Morris (flute), Sidney Sutcliffe (oboe), and Bernard Walton (clarinet).
[We apologize for the rather poor sound quality of this 1960s lp.]
Roberto Gerhard, born in Tarragona in 1896, was a pupil of Felipe Pedrell, and has never lost (or despised) his gift for that picturesque style which stresses Spanish folk characteristics. But his works can preserve a subtle national flavor even when employing the more sophisticated technical resources he acquired during his study with Schönberg in 1925-28. Thus the Wind Quintet, written at the end of that period and four years after Schönberg's weighty essay in the medium, opens with a bassoon phrase that has the nonchalant rhythm of a folksong yet also establishes a seven-note row that is of crucial (though not, as in Schönberg, exclusive) importance throughout the first two movements. In the first, set against its inversion (oboe and clarinet, after the reiterated tutti chords), it also forms the second subject of a sonata scheme, but in the Andante (aba;c;aba;coda) it is constantly played off against its images in contrapuntal textures of extreme lucidity. The new theme (flute) of the Allegro giocoso, though also subject to quasi-serial transformations, demands a more harmonic accompaniment, while the trio, with an evocative echo of Spanish folk-song (oboe), finally transplants this serenade from Schönbergian territory. In the scherzoso finale, the refrain (oboe) and horn-call accompaniment piquantly dispute, rather than deny, tonalities; the central episode and the presto coda explore, with contrasted results, the conjunction of the refrain shape with the two "rows" of the earlier movements.
The members of The London Wind Quintet were Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Alan Civil (horn), Gareth Morris (flute), Sidney Sutcliffe (oboe), and Bernard Walton (clarinet).
[We apologize for the rather poor sound quality of this 1960s lp.]
![Jörg Herchet, Komposition 1 für zwei Violinen, Viola und Violoncello [1980] - ii.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EJ3Ezo_1GYs/mqdefault.jpg "Jörg Herchet, Komposition 1 für zwei Violinen, Viola und Violoncello [1980] - ii.
The subject of Jörg Herchets thesis while studying in East Berlin was The Theoretical Writings of Arnold Schönberg and Their Significance for the Teaching of Composition. Herchet argued the need for a teaching method setting out from Schönberg and leading to Pierre Boulez. This line of thought was anathema to the school administrators, who felt that the teaching of composition should lead to Hanns Eisler [ironically, a student of Schönberg, and a fine composer in our opinion]. After failing to complete his degree Herchet worked for a year in Dresden as a temporary employee in the bookdealers trade. In 1970 Paul Dessau was able to have the young composer accepted as his special pupil at the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin even though he lacked a degree. In Dessau, Herchet found a teacher who could accept and further his own approach to composition.
Jörg Herchets Composition 1 for Two Violins, Viola and Violoncello was written in 1980 and is dedicated to Paul Dessau in veneration and gratitude. Herchets two-movement string quartet is based on a specific dramaturgical conception. The second movement starts out with scraps of material and motifs from the preceding movement. The texture becomes more compressed, and for a moment we hear once again the arpeggiated passage of chromatic saturation, this time built of all-interval chords. Then, in rigid and regular repetition, all-interval chords march past en masse in a wide variety of transpositions. The motor-like thrust of the rhythm, however, soon dissolves once again into a dense polyphony in which striking particles of melody occasionally rise to the surface. At the very end, clearly divided into dynamically activated chordal blocks, we hear mirror-reflections and inversions of the pure all-interval chord vanishing in pianissimo. A state of stability seems to have been reached.
The only supra-musical dimension that Herchet allows his works to assume is expressed in the phrased soli Deo gloria [to the glory of Gold alone] found at the end of each of his compositions since 1984. Herchet sees himself entirely as a composer of religious and sacred music. His understanding of religion, however, cannot be easily conveyed on words. Parts of it are alluded to in such concepts as veneration of the all-encompassing, the holistic, the common substance of man. He regards his music to as a yearning for God. The important thing for me is first to unify all the different areas and then the most important thing in all of my music to proceed from that unity.")
