One movement.
Slowly
Suddenly faster
Tempo I
Slower
Very fast
Moderately
Clefs
Treble, bass
Meters
2/4, 3/4, 5/8, 4/4, 7/8, 6/8
Key signatures
None
Range
Horn 1: g - c3
Horn 2: c# - g2
Horn 3: d# - b2
Horn 4: F# - g2
Horn 5: g - a2
Horn 6: A - g2
Horn 7: c# - ab2
Horn 8: E - c#2
Creator's Comments
While I was teaching at Rhodes College, the music department presented a series of concerts honoring the life of Burnet C. Tuthill, a composer whose influence and legacy at Rhodes was inestimable. During one of these concerts I had the idea for Valediction, conceiving it as a personal tribute to Tuthill. The final section begins with a single player declaiming a fragment from Tuthill's Prelude for Horn and Organ. Other players then join in a canonic ostinato over which a high-horn consort and a low-horn consort dreamily exchange reactions to what has come before.
A four-voice fugue and a bubbling tune in the key of D provide the raw materials for the first two sections of the piece.
Performance Notes
Patterson’s Valediction is on the borderline of difficult and very difficult. The range is extended, the meters change frequently, as do the rhythmic figures, the voices are mainly independent, and a wealth of extended techniques are required. Still, there is something about this work that makes it unmistakably “hornistic””, and therefore more accessible than, say, the Tippett Sonata. Those familiar with Patterson’s works will find this work an interesting challenge.