''Tempest Fantasy'' is a 2003

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

composition in five movements for

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

, and

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

by the American composer

Paul Moravec Paul Moravec (born November 2, 1957) is an American composer and a University Professor at Adelphi University on Long Island, New York and also a member of the composition department of the Mannes School of Music . Already a prolific composer, he ...

. The piece is dedicated to

ist David Krakauer and the

piano trio A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments, usually a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in classical chamber music. The term can also refer to a group of musi ...

Trio Solisti, who premiered the work May 2, 2003 at

Morgan Library & Museum The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th S ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The title of the work comes from the play '' The Tempest'' by

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

. The work won the 2004

Pulitzer Prize for Music The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted i ...

Composition

Structure

''Tempest Fantasy'' has a duration of approximately thirty minutes and is composed in five movements: #Ariel #Prospero #Caliban #Sweet Airs #Fantasia

Style and inspiration

Moravec commented on the composition in the program notes for the work, saying: Moravec has also suggested that the piece was an allegory for his own struggle with depression, commenting: "Coming back from depression, I identified with

Prospero Prospero ( ) is a fictional character and the protagonist of William Shakespeare's play '' The Tempest''. Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, whose usurping brother, Antonio, had put him (with his three-year-old daughter, Miranda) to sea ...

and his melancholy and his downcast state. Through the power of imagination he improves his condition, and so that’s what I did as a composer."

References

{{Authority control Compositions by Paul Moravec 2003 compositions Pulitzer Prize for Music-winning works Chamber music compositions 21st-century classical music Music based on works by William Shakespeare Works based on The Tempest

Composition

Structure

Style and inspiration

See also

References