Belgian Bliss (score & parts) - WW5

Belgian Bliss
for woodwind quintet: flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon
by David Del Tredici (b. 1937) - American composer

Commissioned by the Dorian Wind Quintet. 
From the composer:
Belgian Bliss, a 20-minute fantasy on the Mendelssohn Wedding March, was written in celebration of the marriage of my dear composer friend, Tom Cipullo. His new wife, Hedwig Brouchart, is from Ghent, Belgium where in a blissful setting, with the composer as best man, the ceremony was performed. This was July 2010. 
The fantasy begins in an amiable fashion with sunny scale figures moving through the instruments (a musical metaphor for early marriage bliss?). Before long, the first statement of the Wedding March is presented energetically and forte in the horn. As the music calms, a flute cadenza leads to a "Molto Allegro" fugue, the subject of which is, of course, the Mendelssohn tune. 
The music continues to ebb and flow in a capricious, fantasy-filled way. But with the arrival of the horn's high C- repeated 10 times- there is little doubt that the climax has been achieved. In the quiet coda, a fresh bit of the march's Trio section is quoted in the oboe. Again, the music picks up energy and speed- plunging headlong now to its conclusion- but not before the fortissimo Coda of the Mendelssohn March is suddenly and climactically cut into the texture. The horn, then, in ecstatic ascent, rises to a stratospheric high E, as the piece ends triumphantly.