03/27/2026
The final piece featured on our program is Symphony No. 10: The River of Time, by David Maslanka with Matthew Maslanka. 🎶
Symphony No. 10 was commissioned by a consortium headed by Stephen K. Steele, Scott Hagen (University of Utah), and Onsby Rose (The Ohio State University). Maslanka passed away while writing this final work. His son, Matthew completed the composition based on his father’s sketches. According to David, the work began with two visions or dreams of “the Holy Mother takes me sliding down a rocky mountain slope, all loose small rocks,” and “the Holy Mother in the guise of an 18-year-old Swiss farm [shows me] views of the earth and the oceans.” As he began writing, his inner compass pulled him forward – as he put it - “into the humble world of the chorales. A pattern began to emerge of a chorale and a response, the response being the evolution of a radically simple, intimate, and beautiful melody. This process kept repeating itself until half a dozen of these melodic pairings began to emerge.”
At the time of his death, David had fully completed the first movement and half of the second. The remainder of the second movement and the whole of the fourth movement were sketched out. The third movement had an opening sketched, but the rest was in fragments. The composer asked his son to finish the work, drawing on the sketches and then piecing the sections together. The first movement “Alison” was written for his wife who was dying of an immune disorder in the spring of 2017. This movement may be seen through that lens, with bitter rage at the coming loss and a beautiful song full of love. The second movement’s title, “Mother and Boy Watching the River of Time,” comes from David’s final pencil sketch of the same name. It depicts two small figures sitting on a riverbank in front of a forest and mountain foothills. The music is largely a transcription of the second movement of the euphonium sonata he wrote for Matthew, Song Lines. The third movement center on “The Song at the Heart of it All,” Matthew’s response to the deaths of his mother and father. The fourth movement, “One Breath in Peace,” is about acceptance and the ability to move forward after loss. The long solo lines for oboe reflect the Bach chorale, Jesu, der du meine Seele. The Symphony closes with the last statement of the chorale, with the pianist singing the tenor line. 🤍
David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1943. He attended the Oberlin College Conservatory where he studied composition with Joseph Wood. He spent a year at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and then did masters and doctoral study in composition at Michigan State University with H. Owen Reed. Maslanka’s music for winds has become especially well known. Among his more than 150 compositions are over 50 pieces for wind ensemble, including ten symphonies, seventeen concertos, a Mass, and many concert pieces. His chamber music includes four wind quintets, five saxophone quartets, and many works for solo instrument and piano. Maslanka served on the faculties of the State University of New York at Geneseo, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, and was a freelance composer in Missoula, Montana from 1990 until his death in 2017.
