Commissioned by the Music Institute of Chicago

Intended for youth ensembles and audiences, Goulash refers to the rich flavor of Hungarian musical styles. The first movement, Getting Hungary, is folk-like in its use of ostinato figures and biting harmony, and moves forward with a persistent pulse. Ligeti Split, refers to the Hungarian composer György Ligeti (emphasis on the first syllable, it’s a pun…), and his “cloud music” style in which sounds and colors are blurred to create an aural montage. The final movement, Bar Tálk, makes stylistic reference to the manner in which Hungary’s greatest composer, Béla Bartók, treated folk-like materials. This movement is the most raucous of the three, using melodic figures, built on a Hungarian-type scale, over a driving ostinato. The structure of all three movements is based on the “Golden Mean”, a procedure that was used by both Bartók and Ligeti.