Moravec: Brandenburg Gate for chamber orchestra

Instrumentation: solo violin; 1010; 0100; stgs
Duration: 15′
Composed: 2008
Published by: Subito Music Publishing

For trumpet, flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), solo violin and strings. Approximately 17 minutes.

Full Score & Parts: available on rental:

The title, Brandenburg Gate, suggests a portal through which we enter Bach’s world of exuberant invention. It also refers to the actual monument in Berlin, which I personally associate primarily with the astonishing images of the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.

There are three movements in this piece—fast-slow-fast—and they are played attacca, that is, without interruption between the movements. The name Bach, B-A-C-H, can be represented in German musical notation as B-flat – A – C – B-natural. Bach himself used this device occasionally in his own music, and various composers since then have followed his lead in tribute to the master. This piece is, among other things, a musical meditation and elaboration on the motive. As the B-A-C-H motive is a chromatic four-pitch collection, it well suits my characteristically chromatic harmonic language. Occasionally, the motive serves as the foundation of various twelve-tone rows treated in the general context of my own particular tonality. –Paul Moravec