Aulos

Written for solo oboe.  Francois Morel, born in Montreal in 1926, belongs to an important group of Quebec composers, all of them students of the late Claude Champagne.  The work is divided into two sections, the first of which favors the oboe's extreme swiftness and agility around the interval of the minor ninth, almost to the exclusion of others, and this occurring during a passage of forty measures consisting of constantly shifting meters.  Sixty-seven chords whose harmonies originate from a "mirror" mode "symmetrical" mode "reflective" mode become the linear melodic transcription of vertical blocks.  The A440, which is the orchestral tuning note, makes its appearance here as an "idee fixe."  Preface in Fr. and Eng.  Score (looseleaf), 5 p.