SERENADE IN HOMAGE TO MOZART for Double Wind Quintet by JONATHAN HARVEY (Great Britain, 1939 – 2012)

[#315] Aug 4, 2025 England | 1991 | Double Wind Quintet | Grade 6 | Chamber Winds

Premiered by London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Harvey

on Aug 04, 1991 at Glyndebourne, Great Britain

Purchase score at Faber Music

Serenade in Homage to Mozart, by British composer Jonathan Harvey is our Composition of the Week.

The serenade was written in 1991 and was premiered the same year, on August 4, 1991, exactly 34 years ago, during the Glyndebourne Festival, who commissioned the piece, with members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the composer himself conducting.

“Written to preface performances of The Magic Flute, my Serenade ends with a loud, high chord of E flat, the first chord of the opera. But that is not the only connection. The ensemble includes two flutes, one doubling piccolo: Mozart never wrote a serenade for wind using flutes, but of course for The Magic Flute there had to be flutes, Papegeno’s pipes too, represented at the very beginning of the first movement, and returning in the second movement, by the piccolo. In fact, they seem to inspire much of the running scale style of the first movement. There are several other quotes in the contrapuntal fabric of the second movement too. But there is a hidden agenda. The first movement quotes from my opera, itself inspired by The Magic Flute, Inquest of Love. The inner meaning will be revealed when it is itself performed in June 1993!” Program Notes by Jonathan Harvey

Serenade in Homage to Mozart is scored for 2 flutes (also piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (also E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, 2 horns. It has a duration of 10 minutes, and it is available at Faber Music on rental.

Jonathan Harvey was a chorister at St. Michael’s College in Tenbury and then studied music at St. John's College, Cambridge. He earned doctorates from the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. On the advice of Benjamin Britten, he studied composition with Erwin Stein and Hans Keller, both students of Schoenberg. This led him to become familiar with the twelve-tone technique. From 1969 to 1970, he was a Harkness Fellow at Princeton University, where his encounter with Milton Babbitt had a considerable influence on his work. The new technologies of the time, still in their infancy, opened him to an avant-garde compositional dimension: the exploration of sound. His meeting with Stockhausen was also decisive, as it guided him in learning studio techniques. They shared the view that electronic technologies could transcend the physical limits of traditional sound sources. Both composers were seeking a convergence between the rational and the mystical, the scientific and the intuitive. In 1975, Jonathan Harvey published a book on Stockhausen’s work.

In the early 1980s, Pierre Boulez invited Jonathan Harvey to work at IRCAM, where he created, among others, Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (for tape), Bhakti (for ensemble and electronics), Advaya (for cello and electronics), and String Quartet No. 4 (with live electronics). He also became familiar with the spectralist movement, which he considered decisive for the evolution of contemporary music. Moreover, electronic sound appeared to him as a gateway to transcendental and spiritual dimensions.

Jonathan Harvey’s work covers all genres: music for a cappella choir, large orchestra (Tranquil Abiding, White as Jasmine, and Madonna of Winter and Spring), chamber orchestra (String Quartets, Soleil noir / Chitra and Death of Light, Light of Death), ensemble, and solo instruments. He is regarded as one of the most imaginative composers of electroacoustic music. His first opera, Passion and Resurrection (1981) inspired the making of a BBC documentary (The Challenge of the Passion); the second, Inquest of Love, commissioned by the English National Opera, premiered under the direction of Mark Elder in 1993; the third, Wagner Dream, commissioned by De Nederlandse Opera, the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, the Holland Festival, and IRCAM, premiered in 2007.

From 2005 to 2008, Jonathan Harvey was composer-in-residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, where he created Body Mandala, ...towards a pure land, and especially Speakings in 2008 (commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, IRCAM, and Radio France).

Jonathan Harvey received commissions from around the world and was one of the most frequently performed composers of his time. His works have been performed by Ensemble Modern, Ensemble intercontemporain, the Asko Ensemble, the Nieuw Ensemble (Amsterdam), and the Ictus Ensemble (Brussels) at festivals such as Musica (Strasbourg), Ars Musica (Brussels), Musica Nova (Helsinki), Acanthes, Agora, and at numerous contemporary music centers. Nearly two hundred performances of his works are given or broadcast each year, and about eighty recordings are available on CD.

Jonathan Harvey held honorary doctorates from the universities of Southampton, Sussex, Bristol, and Huddersfield, and was a member of the European Academy. In 1999, he published two books on inspiration and spirituality. A study of his work by Arnold Whittall was published by Faber & Faber (and in French by IRCAM Editions) the same year. Two years later, John Palmer published a substantial study, Jonathan Harvey’s Bhakti, with Edwin Mellen Press.

From 1977 to 1993, Jonathan Harvey was Professor of Music at the University of Sussex, where he remained as Honorary Professor. From 1995 to 2000, he taught at Stanford University (United States), was a visiting professor at Imperial College London, and an honorary fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.

He was awarded the prestigious Britten Prize for Composition in 1993, the Giga-Hertz Prize for his body of electronic works in 2007, and Speakings received the Prince Pierre of Monaco Prize. He was the first British composer to receive the Grand Prix Charles Cros. Between May 2009 and May 2010, Jonathan Harvey’s work was celebrated worldwide through concerts and festivals dedicated to him, through new recordings and portraits. The BBC Symphony Orchestra honored him in its Total Immersion series in January 2012.