Harri Wessman

Pan and the Nymph Pitys - Towards the Night

Harri Wessman's Pan and the Nymph Pitys (1979) for flute and guitar bears the first symptoms of his later style, the texture being softly dissonant. In an old mythological dictionary the composer found that Pan had had some love affair with an other nymph than famous Syrinx as well, with Pitys (greek pine-tree). So the listener may think of Pan in the vital A-sections and imagine the nymph in the languishing B-section and coda of the ABA form. Towards the Night (1978) for flute and guitar belongs to Wessman's previous world of tonal entertainment music. It is a melodious ballad, characterized by a short-long rhythm, a lot of seventh and altered chords and a passage, where the guitar takes the leed and plays the melody in tremolo.