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Serenade
David Sampson (1997)“How does one portray a person in music?” was the question I asked myself again when I began to write Serenade. I had actually tackled this question before in a previous work titled Three Portraits for tuba and chamber orchestra in which the person musically sketched was Scott Mendoker, close friend and tubist. Now I wanted to portray my wife, Christine, my two sons, Benjamin and Mark, and myself. What I chose to do was concentrate on personalities. And since we are quite a close knit family, it seemed natural to intertwine these personalities into a single twelve-minute movement.
The next decision centered on which instrument would best represent us. For a long time, I had wanted to write something for an instrument that was not terribly familiar and has a minuscule repertoire: a flügelhorn. Since this instrument is to the brass family (I am a trumpet player) what the viola is to the string family (my wife is a violist), somehow the connection seemed to fit. And I had vivid recollections and photos of both of my kids dragging my flügelhorn around my studio when they were very young. The personalities are presented in this order: me; my wife; my very cool thirteen year old son, Benjamin; my nine year old son, Mark, bugging the hell out of his brother, Benjamin.