Persichetti, Divertimento for Band
I grew up in band country—Texas. There was only one year in one school where we had an orchestra. And let’s face it, the orchestra was not very good, whereas the band had many competent instrumentalists. Band repertoire didn’t always offer us horn players very meaty parts. But new music was being written for band, and there were some composers who stood out as always challenging and fun to play.
One familiar name from that time was Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987). His energetic and colorfully orchestrated scores kept all of the players on their toes.
Trained as a pianist and organist, many of his compositions were written for piano. He also composed choral music and nine symphonies. When he joined the faculty at Juilliard in 1947, he began to focus on compositions for band. The Divertimento, written in 1949 and premiered in 1950, was his first work for band. It consists of 6 short movements:
- Prologue
- Song
- Dance
- Burlesque
- Soliloquy
- March
Persichetti began writing the work for orchestra. But he explained:
I soon realized the strings weren’t going to enter, and my Divertimento began to take shape. Many people call this ensemble “band.” I know that composers are often frightened away by the sound of the word “band,” because of certain qualities long associated with this medium—rusty trumpets, consumptive flutes, wheezy oboes, disintegrating clarinets, fumbling yet amiable baton wavers, and gum-coated park benches! If you couple these conditions with transfigurations and disfigurations of works originally conceived for orchestra, you create a sound experience that’s as nearly excruciating as a sick string quartet playing a dilettante’s arrangement of a nineteenth-century piano sonata. When composers think of the band as a huge, supple ensemble of winds and percussion, the obnoxious fat will drain off, and creative ideas will flourish.
That image of the band has faded in large part due to the efforts of Persichetti and some of his contemporaries. Band repertoire has expanded dramatically since then as composers realize its possibilities and the increased opportunities for performance.
