Update Title: 8AEE6807-5D92-4AAF-A71C-25F3511A9C4A

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Orphée-Sérénade (1984) by William Bolcom
 
One of my favorite pieces by my teacher Darius Milhaud is the 1957 Aspen Serenade, op. 361, for nine instruments; and the present work honors its predecessor in at least one detail. The Aspen Serenade uses each letter of the town name Aspen as the first letter of a movement title, and I’ve done the same thing here with the French form of the word Orpheus. I could have used the original form of the word for a seven-movement work, but I wanted a six-movement one with a French cast.
The Orpheus legend lurks somewhere in the background (see the Bacchantes in the third movement), but more directly referred to is the Baroque suite, French style, and the serenade of Mozart’s time. These short movements run the gamut from almost complete atonality to frankly traditional tonality, although C major is the root key of the whole serenade.
The Ouverture functions much like the Allemande of a Baroque suite; marked “Allegro moderato, con eleganza: with humor and delicacy throughout”, it sets up the balanced structure and the tonal plan of the whole piece. Romance, on the dominant (G major), is frankly romantic, reminiscent, and youthful – perhaps an evocation of the loss of Euridice. I think of the Pas des Bacchantes as belonging to the family of Rameau’s dances and the fast symphonic movements of Roussel. Many years ago Milhaud’s son Daniel, the painter, planned a cartoon with a main character Hurluberlu, which I was to set to music; while this movement is not a recall of that music, it shares the mood of the aborted project (in French hurluberlu means something like a free-for-all and is distantly related to the English “hurlyburly”). Elégie, a short lament, leads directly into the last movement, Energique, wherein the opening angry violin solo is also a complaint – after all, doesn’t the solo violin always have a lot to play in the classic serenade? (“Where’s my solo? This piece is almost over!”) – and this complaint becomes the solo! Very quickly the piece begins to evoke, and finally quotes, a movement of the Mozart “Haffner” Serenade (K. 250, fourth movement), which, because it is in G major, allows for the final resolution to the home key of C.
 
William Bolcom

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