''Lento'' is a composition for orchestra written by
Howard Skempton
Howard While Skempton (born 31 October 1947) is an English composer, pianist, and accordionist.
Since the late 1960s, when he helped to organise the Scratch Orchestra, he has been associated with the English school of experimental music. Skem ...
in 1990. It was Skempton's third work for large forces, and his first major success.
The piece was commissioned by the
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO) is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. T ...
. Skempton was to write a piece to be performed between the Prelude from
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...
's ''
Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem '' Parziv ...
'' and a
Deryck Cooke
Deryck Cooke (14 September 1919 – 26 October 1976) was a British musician, musicology, musicologist, broadcaster and Gustav Mahler expert.
Life
Cooke was born in Leicester to a poor, working-class family; his father died when he was a child, but ...
completion of Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony. Skempton initially set out to compose three short pieces to be played in sequence, but afterwards decided on a single large piece. ''Lento'' was completed in November 1990; it was premiered on 12 March 1991 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre concert hall, conducted by
Mark Wigglesworth
Mark Wigglesworth (born 19 July 1964) is a British conductor.
Biography
Born in Sussex, Wigglesworth attended Bryanston School, Manchester University, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. He won the Kondrashin Conducting Competition in A ...
oboe
The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range.
...
s,
cor anglais
The cor anglais (, or original ; plural: ''cors anglais''), or English horn in North America, is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, making it essentially an al ...
contrabassoon
The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower. Its technique is similar to its smaller cousin, with a few notable differences.
Differences from the bassoon
The reed is cons ...
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standar ...
s, 3
trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrat ...
s,
tuba
The tuba (; ) is the lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece (brass), mouthpiece. It first appeared in the mid-19th&n ...
,
timpani
Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditiona ...
, and strings. The instrumentation is the same as that of Wagner's ''Parsifal'' prelude, although Skempton's use of instruments is very different. Most of ''Lento'' is scored for strings alone, and although there's a central section scored for woodwinds, instruments other than strings are generally used to highlight various aspects of the music. The piece comprises 166
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (un ...
s, but the single orchestral tutti occupies only eight. Timpani are used only twice, both times to produce a G
trill
TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware cust ...
.
Like much of Skempton's work, ''Lento'' uses precomposed chance arranged sequences of chords as the basic harmonic material. There are ten sections, and the melodic material is restricted for the most part to just two themes. The opening section presents the "first subject" and establishes the tonic key of G minor. This material is repeated three more times as sections 5, 7 and 10. The second section, which the composer refers to as the "lyrical second subject", is repeated only once as section 9. The tempo (
quarter note
A quarter note (American) or crotchet ( ) (British) is a musical note played for one quarter of the duration of a whole note (or semibreve). Quarter notes are notated with a filled-in oval note head and a straight, flagless stem. The stem ...
= 52) is kept constant throughout the piece.
Note value
In music notation, a note value indicates the relative duration of a note, using the texture or shape of the '' notehead'', the presence or absence of a ''stem'', and the presence or absence of ''flags/ beams/hooks/tails''. Unmodified note valu ...
s are restricted to mostly
half note
''Half Note'' is a live album by saxophonist Clifford Jordan which was recorded in 1974 and first released on the SteepleChase label in 1985. a number of scholarly articles were written about it. ''Lento'' was described as " the emancipation of the consonance" by musicologist Hermann-Christoph Müller.Müller, Hermann-Christoph. 1998. "Emanzipation der Konsonanz: Howard Skemptons Orchesterstück ''Lento''". ''MusikTexte'', no. 75 (August): 77–81.