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Music open thread: Celesta concertos [1]
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Date: 2025-05-06
It was raining on Cuatro de Mayo in Detroit. I wanted to go to the Cinco de Mayo parade, but the light rain was enough to dissuade me. Then, on the actual day, I saw on Fox News a lower third describing this year’s Cinco de Mayo as “subdued.” I didn’t watch long enough to see if they pretended to be surprised as to what could have dampened spirits for this uniquely American drinking holiday.
And even though I didn’t really observe Cinco de Mayo this year, and not many other people seem to have done so for that matter, I decided to postpone to today this open thread that I’ve been generally posting on Mondays.
Last week it was about the harpsichord, this week I go on to the celesta, holding off on the piano for now. According to Yamaha,
The celesta was invented ... in 1886 by Auguste Mustel, a Parisian organ maker. It has a keyboard and is sized and shaped like an organ, but its sound is completely different: soft and adorable but able to carry over quite a distance. Like a metallophone, celestas feature a graduated set of metal sound bars inside. When played, hammers strike these bars and produce sound, making the celesta a percussion instrument with a keyboard action mechanism.
Tchaikovsky was the first Russian composer to use the instrument, employing it to great effect in the Nutcracker. With the popularity of that ballet, the instrument took off.
Despite the popularity of the instrument, not many composers have written concertos for it. Sarah Elise Thompson is one of the few I could find.
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When you search for celesta concertos, most likely you will find Bartók Béla’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.
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Of course I have to include my own composition, even though it has yet to be played by human performers (and it might never be, and the key, A-flat minor, does not help). It consists of two movements: first an Andante, a passacaglia searching for the fugue theme, and then an Allegro, a fugue using the fugue theme discovered by the passacaglia at the end.
The open thread question: what is your favorite music with celesta solos?
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