Review

Petros Shoujounian
Five Musical Moments:
Brass quintet: 2 C trumpets, F horn, trombone, tuba

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Publisher: Cherry Classics Music
Date of Publication: 2020
URL: http://www.cherryclassics.com

Score and parts.

Primary Genre: Brass Ensemble - 5 brass

This suite is inspired by the folk music collected and transcribed by Armenian musicologist/priest/composer Komitas (1869-1935). The work’s composer, Petros Shoujounian, is an Armenian musician who established himself as a Canadian composer beginning in the 1980’s. He has studied the Armenian music of Bartok, Hovhaness, and Katchaturnian, and was inspired to compose a piece based upon the large collection of Komitas’ ethnographical songs. The composer states: “I believe that in those beautiful musical fragments reside the power to be revived, once we enrich them with colorful musical instruments and unbounded polyphonic imagination.”

Shoujounian has fitted the folk music to the brass quintet ensemble effectively; he has created five distinct characters between the differing movements, and each one utilizes the ensemble quite creatively. The first movement, Presto, is a bold introductory statement with overlapping counterpoint. It accentuates the augmented second interval through descending legato lines in the key of D harmonic minor. The second movement is presented in 11/4 meter with a sparser construction, including meandering melismas in the trumpet parts, and frequent fermatas. The third is a more active, dance-like movement with dense trumpet parts juxtaposed overtop sparse low brass accompaniment. The fourth movement is an Allegro fanfare in 6/8 meter, featuring legato lines in middle brass voices with detached punctuations in the trumpet parts. The fifth and final movement, Adagio, is constructed like a song in 3/4 meter. There are highly ornamented figures appearing in all parts; the brass players take turns expressing the melody while other members support with sustained tones.

Instrumentation calls for two trumpets in C, horn in F, trombone, and tuba. The score calls for all parts to be muted in the fifth movement. Trumpet parts range from b-c-sharp3. The horn part spans e-b2. The trombone part is written in bass clef and sits low, ranging from E-e1. The tuba part spans EE-e. This piece is appropriate for a college or professional level quintet.