Mátyás Seiber Permutazioni a Cinque (1958), The London Wind Quintet

Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960) achieved distinction as a teacher that rested on his own mastery of a wide variety of techniques, from Jazz to Schönberg. Yet his debts are never burdensome, witness his persuasive modifications of twelve-tone techniques in Ulysses or the Quartetto Lirico. Shortly before his untimely death, he had begun to profit from a similarly undogmatic investigation of textural methods deriving ultimately from Webern. The Permuazioni are athematic music, small cells or notes in discontinuous textures and tempi. There permutation regulates, not a series of notes, but the series of intervals (i.e., minor second to major seventh); this ensures an endless melodic diversity but is also utilized by Seiber in luminous harmonic units, fastidiously assembled from contrasting intervals. These provide one obvious means of articulation, but the whole work is succinct enough for the listener to trace the pattern of correspondences in its patchwork of quick, jagged staccato passages (branded by the works initial repeated rhythm a legacy from Schönbergs Quintet, cf. the third movement or Roberto Gerhards Wind Quintet of 1928) and slow sostenuto passages. The vehement climax is dominated by an eloquent horn solo; as it dies away, oboe, clarinet and bassoon exchange characteristic phrases in a cadenza. The flutes entry begins a quasi-restatement in which the two basic moods return in single, but now extensive, paragraphs.

Seibers reputation as a teacher-composer attracted pupils from all over Europe, including Hugh Wood, Tony Gilbert, Peter Racine Fricker, (who regarded him as the foremost teacher of the century), Ingvar Lidholm, Hinner Bauch, and from Australia, Don Banks. He was tragically killed in a car accident in South Africa while on a lecture tour in 1960. Kodály and Ligeti both composed pieces in memoriam. His widow continues to live in the same house in Caterham, in Surrey; his daughter lives in Cambridge.

The members of The London Wind Quintet were Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Alan Civil (horn), Gareth Morris (flute), Sidney Sutcliffe (oboe), and Bernard Walton (clarinet).

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