Concerto No. 2 by David R. Gillingham

Composed by David Gillingham

The Concerto for Marimba is a commission by a consortium of schools and performers headed by Professor Marc Wooldridge of Northwestern College, Orange City, Iowa. The work exploits the full range of the technical and expressive ability of the five-octave concert grand marimba. It is cast in the standard three-movement format. The first movement uses sonata-rondo form and begins with a slow introduction and quasi-cadenza by the marimba. An animated first theme follows in G-minor accompanied by clarinets and tambourine. A contrasting second theme area follows featuring chromatic mediant progressions and descending chromatic lines. The return of the first theme utilizes a slightly different accompaniment. The development section reworks all the thematic material in different guises. The recapitulation presents the first theme, verbatim, as it was in the exposition. The second theme, however, changes the mode to major. The return alternates the marimba on the theme with the winds playing the theme in augmentation. The marimba quietly ends the movement with an ascending and descending arpeggiated passage. The second movement is a chaconne with eight variations. The marimba states a rather haunting ch(more...) Description written by