5 Pastoral Scenes

My initial idea for this music was to write a short romance of sorts for oboe and bassoon, with accompanying strings. However, as often happens, the music took off in a direction of its own, and the piece grew into a more ambitious series of musical scenes with a pastoral character. Without having planned it, it quickly expanded to 5 scenes in all, with an overall fast-slow-fast-slow-fast relationship between the movements. It started out with the dull, but functional title of “Quintet” before I knew where it was going, but now the work is titled, “5 Pastoral Scenes.” All the time I was writing this, I thought it would be lovely to see Marsha Heller and Bill Scribner playing it together, so this music is dedicated to them both.