Leonard Salzedo

Iberian Improvisations (Opus 143) was the last work ever composed by Leonard Salzedo. He completed it in November 1997. During the many years of our friendship he wrote six pieces for me. The first of these was Cantiga Mozárabe, Opus 79, for oboe d'amore and piano, composed in 1970. All six are published by Amoris International.

In the same way as this first haunting piece, Iberian Improvisations is steeped in Moorish, chromatic melody. The Spain of his ancestors was ever-present in Salzedo's style and imagination. Iberian Improvisations, as the title suggests, is full of the sun and history of the Peninsula. Here, the musette invokes a shawm, nasal but sweet, steeped in the traditions of Islam. The voices of the past are caged in a contemporary idiom.

Although conceived initially for musette, the other members of the double reed family of instruments are free to don their imaginary shawm equivalent and pitch themselves against the contrasted accompaniment. A drone of repeated parallel figures portrays the unison of Arabian music, omnipresent in the native Spanish style prior to 1492. A backwash of triads paints a watercolour soundscape through which the soloist weaves his mysterious incantation like a bird on the wing. Once again the unison drone returns and the music fades to stillness, to the 'morendo' marking of the very last measure. The bird flies away to the distant heavens, freed at last, never to return to this earthly plane.

Amoris scores are exclusively available in traditional bound format with global postal distribution and secure payment from Crowther's of Canterbury. Our full downloadable library is being prepared.