Title: Zeke Hecker: On Composing for Woodwind Quintet
Headings: On Composing for Woodwind Quintet
On Composing for Woodwind Quintet
by Zeke Hecker

Content: Zeke Hecker: On Composing for Woodwind Quintet








On Composing for Woodwind Quintet
by Zeke Hecker
This essay originally appeared in Consorting, newsletter of the Consortium of Vermont Composers. Since I first played oboe in a woodwind quintet at about age 13, I've been a fan. I love the richness of five distinct, heterogeneous voices that blend in innumerable ways, so unlike the insistent unity of the string quartet. ( Only two of the quintet instruments share the same sound-producing mechanism, and even those two don't sound much alike. The oboe and bassoon are both double reeds; the clarinet is a single reed; the flute has a sound-hole; the horn isn't even a woodwind, but just wandered in from sheer curiosity, and stayed for 200 years.) I have played through much of the regular repertory in ad hoc groups, for fun, and I've been in one or two longer-lived quintets.