Janko Raseta : Adventures fur Gitarrenorchester :

RASETA : Adventures 1, 2, and 3

Janko Raseta

Score home produced .Requests taken on line

Commissioned by the Jugendgitarrenensemble Musikchule Erfurt, and already performed in several venues, this piece has a guitar line up of 4 guitars, and an optional Electric guitar, with an acoustic Bass guitar, or an electric one, if necessary.

These three movements are quite short but constantly interesting with a fast – slow – fast set up.

The opening Adventure 1 is an Allegro Moderato of 67 bars that does not use the electric guitar. Guitar 2 is a constant semi- quaver pattern of two alternating notes, whilst guitars 3 and 4 provide the harmony at times, often just two notes each, in a gentle harmonic clash .It is the guitar `1 who provides most of the melodic interest here. There is no key signature as the harmonic style is gentle but modern, so that a key is really not available .However that is not to say that it is atonal, far from it.The piece ends with the constant semiquavers of guitar 2 eventually carrying on to the coda on their own and without a retard just stopping .

Adventure II, an Andante Misterioso begins on guitar one playing a repeated 8 quavers of natural harmonics on a gently rising and falling sequence that continues throughout the entire piece, although it is a short 26 bars in total. Here guitar 2 takes the melodic line with guitars 3 and 4 providing harmony in a number of patterns. The Electric guitar and Bass guitars are used here too. Again the pattern of harmonics takes the piece to the coda by itself until it merely stops.

The final Adventure III is an Allegro Vivace, again using every instrument. Again there are a number of places where a motif repeats on a number of the parts whilst the melodic line is played on one of the others. Each part is usually quite different from the others and so a reasonably complex pattern emerges spread over several of the guitar parts. The 118 bar piece closes on a high , resulting in a three movement piece that has a lot of very musical parts, and a harmonic world that is modern but not too much so, and certainly might interest any guitar orchestra that have good players, for nothing is very difficult, but the orchestra does need to be a talented bunch of players.

Chris Dumigan