Nunes, Matthew - Ashe

From the Composer: "Ashe is a piece that was commissioned and premiered by Ashley Klumpp, a euphonium player I met at the University of Central Florida. The basis for this work was inspired by Robert Schumann's Piano piece Carnaval (1934) and a technique he used to compose it. Schumann's piece feathers pitches that spell out names of a town, a friend, and a lover as the melodic basis for each movement. With Ashe I used four letters from Ashley's name that serve as melodic pitches and are frequently used throughout: A= A-Natural, S = Es, or E-Flat, H = B - Natural*, and E = E-Natural.   *In this piece I substitute B-Natural with B-Flat   I also imagined an innocent person, represented by the mid to high register, being closely hunted by a menacing creature, lurking in the bowels of the euphonium range. These two forces are destined to collide, and which one prevails is up to the listener to decide."   ~Matthew Nunes, May 2013