Walker Fanfare Interlude Finale
Gwyneth Walker Fanfare Interlude and Finale Program Notes
After earning her doctorate from Connecticut’s Hartt School of Music, Gwyneth Walker taught at Oberlin College Conservatory. This piece comes from that early part of her career, and was a commission from an orchestra in Washington, D.C. The first (two-minute-long) was a concert-opening fanfare that was first performed in 1978. Other orchestras wanted longer pieces, so she expanded it into the present work. While Walker duplicates no one, the music sounds ‘American,’ sitting comfortably alongside John Williams or Aaron Copland. Some of its rhythmic drive, with consonant harmonies, anticipates John Adams and other ’80’s minimalists. Its central movement introduces its melodies with featured solo woodwinds, and uses congas in the percussion section. The finale returns to some earlier themes and materials, employing lively and challenging time signatures. Some of her later works include settings or arrangements of American poetry and folk-tunes. Her music, especially choral music, is performed hundreds of times a year and has been publically successful, but less popular in the academic composition world, with its emphasis on fellowships and awards. Walker left Oberlin and academia in 1982, and has lived since then, on a dairy farm near Burlington, VT. Some orchestral works composed for family concerts in Vermont include a setting of “A Bicycle Built for Two,” or depict a tennis match. Walker remains impressively active as a published composer of chamber music and choral works, and also travels to work with various groups.Fanfare, Interlude and Finale is a three-movement orchestral work by American composer Gwyneth Walker, written in her characteristically direct and communicative style. Walker is one of America's most prolific composers, with a particular gift for choral and orchestral music that speaks immediately to audiences.
Walker composed the work in the late twentieth or early twenty-first century as part of her extensive catalog of orchestral pieces written for American orchestras and educational institutions.
A typical performance lasts approximately 10 to 14 minutes.
Listen for the bold, declarative opening of the Fanfare, the more intimate and lyrical character of the Interlude, and the energetic drive of the Finale. Walker's music is characterized by strong rhythmic momentum, clear melodic writing, and an instinctive sense of how to hold an audience's attention.
Walker left a tenured university position in 1982 to devote herself entirely to composition, an unusually bold career choice that has proved entirely vindicated. She has since composed over 200 works and is particularly beloved by choral singers and conductors for her instinctive understanding of the voice and her genuinely singable melodic writing.
