Quintet for clarinet & strings

• Date: 1946
• Composer: Douglas S. Moore
• Period: Modern (1910-1949)

Review

The authoritative music reference work New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, concludes it is "...likely that Douglas Moore is to become one of the many composers remembered for a single opera [The Ballad of Baby Doe] out of a lifetime of work."

If so, it would be a shame if works such as this accomplished, attractive, and well-balanced clarinet quintet were to be forgotten. It is a very satisfying work. It has the internal balance among all its ensemble that characterizes the chamber music ideal. It explores a variety of moods, has wit and attractive melodies, and intelligently works them out.

Born in Cutchoque, Long Island, NY (his dates were 1893 - 1969), Moore could trace his ancestry to the early New England settlers of the Mayflower. He is among many in his generation who took some of his studies in Paris, though his main education was at Yale. Just as happened with his close contemporary Virgil Thomson, whose seminal extra-musical artistic influence was the writer Gertrude Stein, Moore also had his entire output shaped by what started out as a chance meeting with a literary figure, the American poet Vachel Lindsay.

Lindsay's poetry, which seems a bit dated now, is striking for the way it incorporates American speech and song rhythms and echoes dance beats and drum patterns in its cadences. Noticing Moore's French-influenced melodic style. Lindsay urged the young composer to seek a distinct American sound in his music. Moore already had written some popular music, and achieved a strong success in Songs my Mother Never Taught Me, a collaboration with folk singer John Jacob Niles, and so was well placed to apply his strong American melody sense to his concert music and operas.

All the qualities mentioned above are present in this quintet. It is a 19- or 20-minute piece in the standard four movements of a sonata-form composition; the scherzo movement is in second place. The quality that most attracts the ear in all but the slowest movement is the rhythm: Alert and attractively American, they propel clear and well-formed melodies throughout the work.

Moore wrote it at the family home at Cutchoque in the summer of 1946 on commission for the Juilliard School of Music, which was where it received its premiere on May 6, 1947.

The opening movement, Allegro risoluto, is the most dynamic of the four movements. It is dominated by the rhythmic pattern that results when a triplet is laid over a duplet. At times in the movement the duality of the rhythm becomes explicit when its two components fall to different instruments, but it is the combined pattern, with its inherent tension, that drives this sonata movement.

The second movement is a slowish scherzo, Andante comodo. It is lighthearted, and in the middle a folk-like melody breaks out. The following Adagio recitativo, the shortest movement, is also dark and brooding in character. Lighthearted rhythmic play including a 7/8 figure provides a satisfying conclusion marked Allegro ritmico. ~ Joseph Stevenson, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
American Clarinet Treasures

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