ca.5min
Published in Octobert 2019 at AvA Musical Editions
Also available at Köbl 
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Repertoire piece for the IV Concurso Adácio Pestana (2020) and the Matosinhos Internacional Competition 2024.
This piece was composed for the Portuguese horn player João Gaspar, in gratitude for accepting to collaborate with my PhD research.
As the name suggests Pastoral intends to transport the listener to the fields, where the sound of the horn echoes.
In the beginning section, three beats with the mouthpiece on the stop mute bell ring start this piece, like Molière knocks. Next, oscillations with the right hand on the stop mute establish a mystery mood on which appears the horn call. This theme is then whistled, giving the horn player time to remove the stop mute, so, after that all the hand effects are produced using the right hand.
This piece is written for a double horn, however not on a chromatic way, instead it is taking advantage of groups of notes within a given harmonic series, that means, considering the double horn as a group of natural horns. Alternating fingerings, the same passage can be played open, stopped, or half stopped. It means the indicated fingerings aren’t optional, as they are a way of changing the key of the horn, getting back to the concept of omnitonic horn. Please note that in this piece the continuation lines are used in two different ways. Sometimes the indicated continuation lines refer only to the left hand fingering to be used on a given passage. So, for example bars 49-50 should be played in E Horn (F2) while the right hand is performing different techniques. However, in other situations, were both the left hand fingering and right hand playing techniques match during the passage, the continuation line appears between these two elements (for eg. bars 51-52).
The indicated microtones correspond to the 7th and 13th overtones. The oscillations with the right hand on the stop mute bell are free, so the exact number of oscillations is up to the performer.
Ricardo Matosinhos