Maurice Wright Calls his Horn for a Fresh Glass of Think

While Maurice Wright may not be the most well-known composer in the country, he's certainly one of the most approachable.  I don't mean to say that his music is simplistic or overtly populist - what I mean is that his music bathes in a wonderfully amiable glow.  I've actually gotten in contact with him and he's like a genuinely nice man, a fine reminder that most artists are de facto normal people and not untouchable gods and divas who shriek at the very mention of fan contact - most non-famous composers are delighted to hear from admirers.  Wright's music is both quite sophisticated and easy to comprehend, sticking to natural structures and phrasing and immersed in an attractive atonal language reminiscent of George Perle's serial tonality.  The trick is that the listener rarely has to think about how his pieces are made - they're enjoyable enough on the surface, and Wright often writes on quirky extramusical subjects.  For example, his Suite for piano is a travelogue of a driving trip he took in the Rocky Mountains, and features a musical portrait of beer guzzling*.  All these elements are present in his Music for French Horn (1975), published by new music best-friend Mobart in their collection Five Compositions for French Horn alongside works by Curt Cacioppo, Edgar Warren Williams, Conrad Pope and Carlos Rausch.  No, I don't expect my readers to know who any of those people are.  Set in three movements, the outer two are goofily titled The Strongest Man and The Unobtrusive Model.  Only the middle movement, The Search for Knowledge, is leafy.

(Click for larger view)

It might be Wright's idea of a joke that a piece called The Search for Knowledge is only three staves long, though I'm more busy trying to figure out if his idea of a joke is jamming the search for knowledge in between the strongest man and an unobtrusive model.  Evidently Wright's method for searching for knowledge involves strolling around a community garden whistling elliptically.  Or perhaps humming a song he forgot the words to while doing his laundry.  The tune is chromatic yet oddly similar to what we imagine our ancestors singing while whittling, though Wright writes a lot of small details into its fabric.  There's not much of an arc, just a point when you start to notice the motives repeating and realize that's a perfectly fine way for the piece to go.  It ends on a mid-volume semi-palindrome, with its humorous lack of a resolution leading nicely into The Unobtrusive Model's upbeat humorousness.  Unfortunately I don't have a recording of this piece, but I do have a recording of his Music for Trombones from the same year, and that piece is amiable, too.

~PNK

*I chose that picture of him for just this reason.