Orchestral Works Vol. 3

Abstract

Completed in November 1917, November Woods received its first performance on November 18, 1920, in Manchester, given by the Hallé Orchestra under Hamilton Harty, who also directed the first London performance a month later. Murdoch published the full score in 1921.

November Woods is the best of Bax's several woodland-inspired tone poems. Bax, however, diminished the pictorial aspect of the piece in letters to friends, reporting that the piece "may be taken as an impression of the dank and stormy music of nature in the late autumn, but the whole piece and its origins are connected with certain rather troublous experiences I was going through myself at the time...." These "troublous experiences" were certainly related to his increasingly intense affair with the pianist, Harriet Cohen.

Bax scores the piece for his typically huge orchestra of three flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, three clarinets with bass clarinet, two bassoons with contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, two harps, timpani, cymbals, glockenspiel, celesta, and strings. Nevertheless, the orchestration is perhaps the most subtle in Bax's entire output. In the opening moments, quivering woodwinds, harps, and muted strings present a delicately shifting array of colors. The full orchestra rarely plays together, prompting comparisons with Mahler's compositions. Also, unusual instrumental combinations, such as oboe doubling cello and viola playing with bassoon and English horn, pepper the piece. Although more succinct than other of Bax's tone poems for orchestra, November Woods is still of epic proportions.

Like most of Bax's compositions in sonata form, November Woods is dominated by its exposition. The beginning of the piece, featuring harp glissandi and swift runs in the woodwind, brings to mind a windy morning as a muted solo cello presents melodic material. Development of the principal theme, a descending, chromatic, three-note gesture, begins shortly after it is first stated, prolonging this segment of the piece through continuous transformation. It is almost as if Bax has written out an improvisation on a melodic idea. The chromatic characteristic of the first theme gives us a hint of the chromatic washes of harmony that mark the piece. Bax's secondary theme, marked Andante con moto and featuring harp and celesta, receives even greater extension and manipulation than the first, creating what seems like a self-contained central section. Pianissimo strings and dizzying horn passages underscored by the colors of the celesta lend a haunting atmosphere to this section, as "wind" again appears in a descending tremolo passage for the strings. By the time the "formal" development section begins it is almost superfluous, which is why Bax made it brief, as he did the recapitulation. A powerful climax dissolves as the piece returns to the opening key of G minor and its initial orchestral texture.

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