Consolation

Five Easy Pieces for Recorder Orchestra

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Score and nine Parts

Since I started to give workshops on my African Recorder Music, I re-arranged some of my trios, quartets, and quintets for a bigger ensemble and simplified them thereby. This collection contains my five favorite arrangements of the last four years.  

The Salutation in Djaboué is the opening movement of my very first African Suite DJABOUÉ from 1993. The Ostinato in 5/4 time drives the piece forward and to its climaxes, and in between, there are typical call and response passages in 5/2 time.  

Circle Dance and Consolation are the first and third movement of my African Suite No. 20, IXESHA. There are wonderful recordings on Youtube from the Boreas Quartet Bremen. Circle Dance is dominated by a typical African four-bar-dance-tune, that should be played very laid back.   Consolation is written in my beloved 12/8 time. It's crucial that the ensemble grooves in the cradling swing rhythm from the first to the last bar. The soprano should only be played by one player, and he or she should be rather advanced. Concerning the atmosphere: Imagine you are a mother, you hold your child, in your arm, lull the child, tell it stories and keep whispering "Everything will be fine". This, of course, is the theme of the bars 255 to 262 (and all parallel passages).  

Ukuvalelisa (Farewell) is from my 10 miniatures for recorder solo. Originally it was the last movement of my African Suite No.14 Umbalisi mabali (The Storyteller) for double bass. This work is dedicated to my father, who has encouraged, accompanied and inspired me all my life, until he died in 2014. This piece is an attempt to say farewell. But how can one say farewell to someone so near, so influential, so important, and still so mysterious like my father was to me? Hence, the end is open.

Finally, Blue Earth is the third movement of my African Suite No. 24 Mathongo Amnandi, that I wrote 2018 for Seldom Sene from Amsterdam. They recorded it brilliantly for their album Not a single road from 2019. This piece is about the dream of being an astronaut, flying through space and watching our earth, the blue planet. It’s also a kind of prayer and meditation. Musically it consists of ten variations on the first four bars.

Consolation was recorded on my African Recorder Music Workshop at Mollenhauer in the summer of 2018.