Sonatina for oboe and bassoon (1963)

Ouverture

Récitatif

Ostinato

What little we know of André Jolivet in this country is representative neither of his status in France, where he is associated for good historical and aesthetic reasons with Olivier Messiaen, nor of the scope of his creative ambition.    On the one hand, there is a composer whose mission it was “to restore to music its original ancient meaning.” On the other hand, there is the composer we have come to think of – in so far as we think of him at all – as a latter-day Ibert or, even more misleadingly, a descendant of the Groupe des Six, whose ideas he disliked as much as Dutilleux does. At the same time, it has to be admitted that there are works from the later part of his career, like his Flute Concerto and several items of chamber music for woodwind, which seem to support that notion.

The nearest we get to the visionary Jolivet in the Sonatine for Oboe and Bassoon is the melody heard in unison at the beginning and again a few bars later, where the shape of the line clearly calls an earnest-minded Messiaen to mind. Apart from that, this is music which, though by no means frivolous, is for entertainment, as in the conversational dialogue for the two instruments in Récitatif and the rhythmic ingenuity of the witty Ostinato.