David Del Tredici

## **Introduction**

David Del Tredici is an American composer who was born March 16th, 1937 in Cloverdale, California. Del Tredici first started piano with lessons from a nun at his private school. Quickly he became an involved performed and was featured with the San Francisco Symphony. His compositional techniques clashed with some of his skills being in 20th-century serialism and other skills in more tonal methods.

## **Work Analysis**

The piece I will be analyzing is In Wartime a wind symphony piece commissioned by Jerry Junkin. In Wartime was written during the time of the Iraq War. The piece was started on November 16th, 2002 and was completed on Tredici's birthday. Tredici composed the piece over the span of the war while listening to the news on television and found peace in his music during a detrimental time. In Wartime consists of obviously wind instruments but also percussion instruments, piccolo parts, three oboe parts, English horn, contrabassoon, and 4 different saxophones (soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone). The piece has two movements to it Hymn and Battlemarch. Del Tradici describes the first movement as having the character of a chorale prelude and the second movement Battlemarch as the start of the war. This piece was dedicated to Steven Burke a fellow composer and good friend of Tredici. The piece starts off extremely light with the first theme introduced through the woodwinds and then repeated in variation. There is an obvious notice of call and response from the flutes to the oboes. The horns make up a delightful round in the back bringing all the parts together. The first movement has a very mystical and cartoonish feeling to it with a light march sound being presented sporadically. The second movement Battlemarch starts off slow and grand with a great horn melody, followed by a variation from the oboes. Although described like the start of a war, Battlemarch is also light in feeling and is mostly tonal not showing many dissonant moments as subjective signs of distress or turmoil. We hear more call and response techniques used in the center of the second movement between horn sections before a slow build up from each instrument that climaxes. The second movement varies in tempo and dynamics while the first movement keeps a more steady pace.

## **Comparisons**

Most of Del Tredici's early compositions were influenced by 20th-century composers such as Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. In 1964 Tredici was introduced to Aaron Copland and frequently referred back to his work for inspiration.

## **Observations**

I loved this piece. It was tonal and grand and subjectively made a great deal of sense for a piece written about war. Researching more on the piece and connecting the picture of war to the mystical music helps to understand the details of the Iraq War in specific. The basic techniques I have learned in class such as theme and variations and call and response helped alot with my analysis and are very apparent in this compostion.

## **Works Cited**

https://scottleeatchison.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/del-tredici-book-chapter-atchison.pdf

http://www.composers21.com/compdocs/deltredd.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David\_Del\_Tredici