School of Music
U N C G
Thomas Pappas
oboe
oboe d’Amore
assisted by:
Dalyn Cook, harpsichord
Gina Pezzoli, cello
Wayne Reich, violin
Will Selle, violin
John Ward, viola
Graduate Recital
Sunday, 21 October, 2007
3:30 pm
Organ Hall, School of Music
Program
Concerto in A major, after BWV 1055 (c.1738) Johann Sebastian Bach
Allegro (1685-1750)
Larghetto arr. Mark Biggam
Allegro ma non tanto
Phantasy, Op. 2 (1932) Benjamin Britten
(1913-1976)
Intermission
The Garden of Love (2002) Jacob ter Veldhuis
(b. 1951)
Quartet in F, K. 370 (368b) (1781) W. A. Mozart
Allegro (1756-1791)
Adagio
Rondeau – Allegro
Thomas Pappas is a student of Dr. Mary Ashley Barret
________
In partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for the
Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance
Notes
In the J. S. Bach Oxford Composer Companion Malcolm Boyd states that Bach’s
harpsichord concerto BWV 1055 originated in Leipzig in connection with his directorship of the
collegium musicum. Many of Bach’s harpsichord concertos are arrangements of his concertos for
other instruments. The arrangement heard today reconstructs the lost oboe d’amore part on
which the existing harpsichord concerto BWV 1055 is based. Reconstructions of this and other
original versions were published in the Neue Bach Ausgabe. In some cases, they have begun to
rival the harpsichord versions in frequency of performance.
Britten’s Phantasy quartet was first performed in a BBC broadcast on 6 August 1933
by Leon Goossens (oboe) and members of the International String Quartet. The work was
composed by a nineteen-year-old Britten, while still a student at the Royal College of Music in
London. In his Guide to Chamber Music Melvin Berger writes: “The title “Phantasy,” more
commonly “Fantasy” or “Fantasia,” usually connotes a piece of imaginative, fanciful music,
spontaneous and free of formal restraints. […] Britten exhibits the skillful control of the musical
elements necessary to attain the requisite freedom of spirit.”
The Garden of Love for oboe and ghetto blaster was composed by Dutch composer
Jacob ter Veldhuis for, and dedicated to, fellow Dutch oboist Bart Schneemann. The soundtrack
includes several interesting ingredients, including a poem, samples from oboes, a harpsichord, a
variety of birds, electronic string sounds, and percussion.
The work is based on the following poem by William Blake (1757-1827):
I went to the Garden of Love.
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys and desires.
Jaroslav Pohanka’s preface to the Bärenreiter Urtext score explains that the autograph
manuscript of Mozart’s oboe quartet reads: “Par Mr: Wolffgang Amadeo Mozart. / á Munic
1781.” The fact that the quartet was written in Munich is significant, since during his stay in
Munich, Mozart must often have met the oboist Friedrich Ramm. He was known as one of the
foremost oboists of his time, and Mozart had already composed for him the oboe part of a
Sinfonia concertante. It seems likely therefore that the oboe quartet, which shows unmistakable
virtuoso characteristics, was written for Ramm, either for his pleasure or as a virtuoso piece.
