Thoughts & Meditations - EH/PN (PDF)

This is the PDF download.

Thought and Meditations is a composition for English horn and piano of 7 minutes in length, and is dedicated to Carolyn Hove, retired solo English horn player of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The piece's character is pensive and lyrical, in a slightly abstract way. The melodic material is fluid, yet often angular in its choices of intervals. Thoughts are generally presented by the English horn, usually followed by the piano meditating on them.

The middle section of Thoughts and Meditations, marked A Love Supreme, features a tribute to the great jazz saxophone master John Coltrane. The musical connection here is that the fully developed rhythm of the piano part is identical to that of the opening bass line of his seminal composition with the same name. The English horn’s runs and trills also evoke Coltrane’s spirit.

After the conclusion of this section the piece returns to material which had been introduced earlier. A brief solo cadenza by the English horn leads to a quiet, final statement.

Many thanks to Carolyn Hove for sharing her wisdom about all things English horn!

Gernot Wolfgang

Santa Fe, March 2026