Musique instrumentale d'ensemble (Ensemble à vent)

When Ellen Highstein, Director of the Tanglewood Music Center, asked me to write a piece to be premiered during their festival of my music at Tanglewood in the summer of 2008, I thought it would be interesting to write a piece for strings that depended only density of textures with no linear material, no change of color or dynamics, with this in mind, I wrote Sound Fields. When my friend, the composer/conductor Oliver Knussen heard this first performance at Tanglewood, where he was conducting many of my pieces that summer, he suggested that I write a companion piece for winds.

This led to Wind Rose, which adds changes of color. The piece is dedicated to Oliver Knussen. I started writing it on July 28, 2008 and finished it on August 8, 2008.

Elliott Carter.