Quintet de vent (1971)

My second String Quintet, written in 1971, is dedicated to the memory of my teacher and friend, Robert Gerhard. It is structured in one single polymorphic movement, consisting of five well-defined and musically contrasting sections, which build an organic whole by means of its internal relationships and its temporal sense and situation.
Its sections are as follows: Introduction-Allegro-Adagio-Vivace-Sostenuto. In the first section, all main elements involved in the composition are introduced. Amongst them, we can find four brief melodic motives proceeding from alpine bird songs, which woke me up insistently when I started composing the quintet. Since I perfectly knew about Gerhard’s love to nature and those melodies featured a surprising similarity to our folk songs, I decided to include them in the composition’s plot. They appear in all sections: in some of them as transition elements, and in others with an outstanding prominence. In general, the most emotive periods appear in the slow movements and the widest sound range is achieved at the end of the third and during the whole fourth section –the only sections in which the piccolo appears, which makes some of the bird songs seem more realistic. We should as well emphasize that the final bars of the quintet almost match up with the ones of my work “Presències” [“Presences”] of 1967.