christopher rouse, Envoi (1995)

“[Christopher Rouse rates as] one of the most defining and credible figures when it comes to setting a meaningful agenda for contemporary music.”

--Fanfare Magazine

Though long an admirer of Richard Strauss' music, I have always been more attracted to the twenty-five-year-old composer's program for Death and Transfiguration than to his actual musical realization of it.

The French word "envoi" is somewhat difficult to translate into English. Obviously, our word "envoy" is related to it, but it also implies concepts ranging from the conclusion of a book or other work of art (or perhaps a life) to the "sending out" of something, much as a space probe is sent out to explore the cosmos. In conceiving this twenty minute work, I decided to dispense with one important aspect of Strauss' program; in Death and Transfiguration, the hero on his deathbed struggles violently against his fate before his spiritual transfiguration at the moment of death. In planning Envoi, I recalled that those whose deaths he had witnessed (including his mother) did not struggle but rather, in effect, seemed to slowly recede from life, much as a ship sails ever more far away until it disappears over the horizon. I thus elected to avoid the use of any sort of "struggle music" and in the process found himself eschewing the presence of fast-tempo material; resultantly, Envoi, like my Symphony No. 1 and Iscariot, is a single-movement adagio.

Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Envoi was commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Yoel Levi, Music Director, through a generous grant from Thurmond Smithgall. It was completed on July 4, 1995 in Fairport, New York. It is scored for an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, four trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, percussion (three players), and strings. The percussion requirements consist of two bass drums, two tam-tams, two suspended cymbals, Chinese cymbal, and vibraphone.