by Caiti Beth McKinney
Hello everyone!
Sometimes finding biographical information about the composers I research is easy; in such cases, they will have Grove Dictionary entries, fleshed-out Wikipedia articles, or websites dedicated to their work. More often, data and historical records are scarce and near impossible to find beyond surface-level detail. Such is the case with this month’s featured composer, Annette LeSiege (1947-2012). In remembrances after the composer’s passing, colleagues and students from her positions at Wake Forest University and New Jersey City University alike described her as a warm and caring educator with a passion for pedagogy and composition. Her catalog of over 70 pieces encompasses a variety of genres, ranging from works for full orchestra to solo and chamber works, several of which feature the horn.
Much of LeSiege’s music, luckily, is fully published and available for purchase—which is not always the case with underrepresented composers. Among her works is a fantastic piece for solo horn entitled Shadow Dancer, a short but profound work featuring extensive muted and stopped passages. The piece feels like a conversation between the muted and open horn, growing increasingly emphatic without any sense of aggression. It ends with a held concert E-flat with instructions to fade “to nothing….” Perhaps the referenced dancer is returning to the shadows?
LeSiege also composed a piece for horn and piano called Airs and Dances, Burgundian Suite for horn and vibraphone, Hoops and Angles for horn and percussion, and other chamber pieces for slightly larger forces including brass quintet, woodwind quintet, and other mixed ensembles. At the time of this writing, none of these works has been recorded, despite the ready availability of sheet music. If Shadow Dancer is any indication, any player who takes the time to learn LeSiege’s unrecorded pieces will be well rewarded!
Recording Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jku10CZTt34 (Shadow Dancer starts at about 26:10 in this recording; the hornist is Horn on Record columnist Ian Zook.)
