To The Dark Wood (score & parts) - WW5

To The Dark Wood (1985)
for woodwind quintet
by George Rochberg (1918-2005) - American composer

The title of this work is metaphoric and is intended to indicate the nature of the music in the most general sense. There is no "program" as such; but there is an expressive tone which pervades and characterizes the atmosphere, the world within which the music takes place: the world of nature and the old mythology which still haunts the mind of man/ Even though the great religious orthodoxies have tried to separate man from nature and nature from man, the Great God Pan still roams the woods with his entourage of satyrs and nymphs and occasionally, in those states of awareness increasingly open to human beings, reveals himself- but never completely. The "calling" which is characteristic of this music is warrant of man's longing for a life which transcends rationalism with its arid, barren effects as well as of nature's longing for a man's poetic healing sympathies. 

Archival reprint. The publisher has increased the price dramatically from when this was a regular printed edition.

Duration: 15:30