« Musique pour Trombone et Piano »
« Music for Trombone and Piano »

1972
Duration : 5 minutes

Commissioned by the « Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris » (CNSMDP, « the Paris Conservatory »), « Music for Trombone and Piano » was the compulsory piece at the June 1973 Conservatory competition for trombone.
This one movement piece, the form of which does not refer to any classified shape, looks like a written improvisation and gives the performers some margin of freedom.
It explores all kinds of technical possibilities of the trombone in order that the given out sounds are extremely varied : the score includes lots of information about dynamics, attacks, articulations, playing modes, etc. For the time of a short sequence, a plunger mute will be used.
There is some theatrical aspect in this music.
It might evoke a delirious individual who talks to himself with great exaggeration in the manifestation of his feelings.
But what a spoken voice, even grandiloquent, would express within a fairly narrow ambitus is here enormously enlarged and makes use of the whole register of the instrument.
It is the will of modeling the melodic lines on the modulations of a spoken voice which justifies the use of micro-tones in the trombone part, with the aim of getting curves without reference to the tempered chromatic scale.
The trombone plays the leading role, while the piano punctuates, echoes, and produces reverberating sounds thanks to the pedal system.
« Music for Trombone and Piano », which served as a compulsory piece in many circumstances, was notably performed by many trombone players in February 1985 on the occasion of the examination for the Certificate of Aptitude organized by the Ministry of Culture.

Editions Françaises de Musique
Distributor : Gérard Billaudot

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