Symphonie pour orchestre burlesque

Symphonie pour orchestre burlesque
(Sur des mélodies populaires savoyardes / On popular Savoye melodies)

Year of composition

1915

Duration

11'

Scored for

For nightingale, quail, cuckoo, child’s trumpet, Glockenspiel, tamtam, drum, tambourine, (castanets), triangle, flute, violins I + II, cello, double bass (with or without left hd)-piano. Ad libitum bugle - small bell in g - guitar

Publication information

Éditions Henry Labatiaz (EHL 5.660)

Commentary

Symphonie pour orchestre burlesque
It has been quite a while since I wrote this little symphony to be played by very young musicians and children. It was 1915 and most of it was written when I was called up as a corporal in the infantry, during a period of five weeks at an observation post at Ordons in the Bern part of Jura. It was requested by a nephew (Pierre Secretan) who is now a retired venerable pastor, for a musical evening given by his school class. He, therefore, was the conductor of the first performance. The second performance was in Geneva, used as an overture to a play written by Daniel Baud-Bovy for his children, Le Baume de Vie, in which the present director of the Conservatoire and the Chant Sacré of Geneva, Samuel Baud-Bovy, then a child, had the main role of a wicked sorcerer. Since then we often played this little symphony within the family, my father playing the part of the quail. We also performed it in Holland, with our younger children and their school friends, to celebrate my 70th birthday; and as there were several musicians, conductors, singers and others amongst the listeners, we asked them to join the orchestra, to play the cuckoo, the nightingale and the drum. There was some hilarious laughter, especially when these ‘great’ musicians made mistakes counting the bars. These are lifelong memories which are linked to this little piece based partly on popular tunes from Savoy.

Text by Frank Martin, written in 1967 for the orchestral score (Henn Editions, Geneva) and also published in A propos de… commentaires de Frank Martin sur ses œuvres (Neuchâtel, 1984) | English translation by Rachel Ann Morgan

Premiere

World première: Geneva, February 1916. Pierre Secretan, conductor

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