Jean – Maurice Mourat
Les Productions D’Oz: Score and separate parts: (7, 3, and 3 pages respectively)
French composer Mourat has written a substantial number of pieces for our guitar, and here he enlists the help of a flute to create a pleasant and quite emotive little work set in G minor of 121 bars.
Beginning in 6/8 the flute melody is a moderato that gentle moves around the G minor without venturing too far away from it, while the guitar part is nearly always a set of moving quavers often in arpeggio style. The harmonic style is friendly and not too modern, although there is the occasional harmonic crunch when, for example, in bar 13 we find an E natural on the flute and an Eb on the guitar’s arpeggio. Likewise the following bar 14, when the flute has an F natural, whilst the guitar plays F #, both on the 5th quaver of the bar. I wondered whether they were meant to be there, or whether there was a misprint involved? There is a definite misprint on bar 48 of the guitar part when a full 6 string G minor chord is actually impossible as it appears on the music , although that is soon put right as a similar chord appears elsewhere, with the correct notes, so I can only imagine that that is what was intended on Bar 48.
After the first section, a new idea in Dm, marked Tempo di Valse, takes the piece in an entirely different direction and where the flute flies around in swiftly moving quavers and the guitar largely keeps up the bass/chord accompaniment that one might expect from a waltz. A ritard into a chord of Dm takes us momentarily to 4 bars of a new Lento idea that returns to the home key of Gm, and then a final return to the opening section, varied slightly for a final move around the main theme, until the coda slows down leading to the final forte run up the scale for the flute, and the guitar closes on the home key chord of Gm.
This is a pleasant work, that needs moderately good players to do it justice, but as the style is always tonal, many duos will love to get their hands on this fine piece of writing.
Regards