Riccicare in C minor for Brass Sextet.

This is a Riccicare I wrote for Brass Sextet. Tell me what you think. And if anyone wants to get a group together to play it, please do and send me the recording. I just want to hear someone play my music.

ricicare in c moll.pdf

Agreed - some kind of audio would be helpful. It looks like you have some interesting textures; I would like to hear it.

I would suggest use of the title/genre designation "Ricercare" is not a desirable one in the twenty-first century, as there is no standard agreement to what it means, and it appears there really wasn't one even in the sixteenth century. It means "to seek out" and is distantly related to the English word "research." J. S. Bach used it to designate works in the "Musical Offering" to designate works that are essentially fugues, though not in a strict style. "Fugato" is a more readily accepted term for that sort of thing.

I remember back in my long ago schooling that I got into some serious trouble by suggesting, in class, that the Ricercare was a historic step along the way to the fugue - my music history teacher bawled me out, and then he told my composition professor about it and he bawled me out some more. And lo and behold, it is right, and I knew it was right at the time because I had read that in some article by Manfred Bukofzer just shortly before. They were really concerned that I not pass on inaccurate information to my fellow students. Phooey!

I have only written one Ricercare, in 1978, and I've been trying to fix what's wrong with the thing for thirty years. Indeed, in the 20th century Menotti, Louis Karchin and Bohuslav Martinu have written works with this designation. But you will not find it between that time and J.S. Bach's, and I really wouldn't use the designation; something about it in the current context just screams "student composition."

Uncle Dave

> it appears there really wasn't one even in the sixteenth century

sorry, meant seventeenth