Gabor Kosa: Bassooning

Gabor Kosa (1950– )
The title Fagottas (Bassoon-ish) is practically untranslatable: it's a sort of wordplay on the Hungarian szőttes meaning "homespun" or perhaps its more pejorative side kopottas, meaning "shabby".
The five short pieces are for intermediate level students, and represent a fairly exacting standard of chamber music. They are not all in the same style, but even so I composed them primarily to be a set of pieces. The repeats in the Burlesque must be played, otherwise it loses its baroque binary form with its reference to the sonata. The Quodlibet refers to the playful practice in Bach's time of improvising a "homespun" musical fabric ("szőttes") out of various well-known tunes. The Nóta (type of 19th century Hungarian popular song) is a 'pseudo- folksong' in which the exaggerated vibrato of the drunken singer is portrayed by the chromatic second part that entwines it. These "arabesques" become later more independent. The Kánon is an imitative canon at the diminished fifth, which is reprised as an invertible canon. The basic inspiration for the last piece – Hommage à B.B. – is "Birkózás" (Wrestling) from Bartók's Mikrokosmos. It continues with a parade of musical fragments, some of which are well known. (2 playing scores – 7 pages notes)