No Longer at Ease for Euphonium Quartet (Print & Ship)
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No Longer at Ease is a stand-alone euphonium quartet inspired by Chinua Achebe’s 1960 novel of the same name. In Achebe’s novel a young man is sent to University by his village’s elders in the hopes he will return able to guide and protect his people through uncertain and unwanted colonialist developments. However, the man abandons their plans to pursue his own interests and faces the fallout of his actions upon his return home and in the volatile years to come. Reading such an affective work in the final semester of my Masters preparing to return home was timely and I have found the similarities between my life and Achebe’s art blurred. I began writing this work upon returning home to Niceville, Florida and realizing that both myself and the town I call home have changed drastically.
The piece begins with jarring sixteenth-notes derived from a rising arpeggiated-tetrachord. Ceaseless double tonguing, the lead in the fourth euphonium, and unsettling metric shifts combine for unique and frenetic effects. A yearning melody enters amidst this chaos and is a musical spelling of “home”. The return and developments of the frenetic material culminates in a solo statement of this theme. The middle section represents the home of years past and features a uniquely Niceville quote with fragments of the Niceville High School fight song. These fragments make up each independent line and the music culminates in a triumphant victory. However, this victory is cut brief by the cutting sixteenth-note driven material from earlier. The finale is an exciting mockery of the “home” theme with interjections and exploitations of all previous themes.
- Matthew Nunes
Niceville, June 2018
The piece begins with jarring sixteenth-notes derived from a rising arpeggiated-tetrachord. Ceaseless double tonguing, the lead in the fourth euphonium, and unsettling metric shifts combine for unique and frenetic effects. A yearning melody enters amidst this chaos and is a musical spelling of “home”. The return and developments of the frenetic material culminates in a solo statement of this theme. The middle section represents the home of years past and features a uniquely Niceville quote with fragments of the Niceville High School fight song. These fragments make up each independent line and the music culminates in a triumphant victory. However, this victory is cut brief by the cutting sixteenth-note driven material from earlier. The finale is an exciting mockery of the “home” theme with interjections and exploitations of all previous themes.
- Matthew Nunes
Niceville, June 2018
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