Joseph Schwantner - ...And the Mountains Rising Nowhere (Score + Audio)

"... And The Mountains Rising Nowhere" is a wind ensemble piece written by Joseph Schwantner in 1977. Being inspired by Carol Adler's collection of poems named Arioso, Schwantner creates a powerfully sonorous and colorful composition that emphasizes his focus on manipulating both timbre and septatonic/octatonic scales.

Schwantner's older scores (before 1990) are known to be notated in "open"/"French" scoring, where staves of instruments in rest do not appear until they are required to play. Although this style of notation is seen as unfamiliar to many, Schwantner used it for the sake of efficiency and to artistically craft a score.

Schwantner uses an especially large wind ensemble, with instrumentalists required to sing, whistle, play glass crystals and water-gongs, and use various other unconventional performing techniques. The amplified piano accompanist further adds to the sonorities emphasized in this piece. The resonance that he creates through this composition is fragile enough that the placement of the percussion can make or break a performance. Through its experimentation and unusual instrumentation, this composition is widely considered as one of the most innovative (and most challenging) pieces for wind ensemble written in the last fifty years.

Performed by the North Texas Wind Symphony.