Divertimento for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon (1956)

It is Baird’s first dodecaphonic piece. It had its premiere in Kraków in 1957, i.e. after the premiere of his second dodecaphonic composition, Cassazione per orchestra (1956).

The work consists of five movements:

I. Capriccio, II. Duetto, III. Quasi Valse, IV. Arietta, V. Marcia

Each of them has its own series, which becomes an important element of the work’s syntax and form – it is used to construct themes and melodic lines. In using the twelve-note technique in his work, Baird showed considerable discipline. Usually, he used full series in four basic forms (prime, retrograde, inversion and retrograde-inversion), transposed from various notes. When constructing chords, he used a series divided into regular groups (three groups of four notes, six groups of two notes).

Divertimento has some features of the neo-classical style. They are: the title itself and cyclical form referring to the cheerful and light instrumental music of the classicism period, brevity and three-phase form of each movement, as well as the use of hierarchy in the sonic material through the introduction of a single “final” note at the end of each movement. The instrumentation, on the other hand, echoes Harmoniemusik.

After a performance of Divertimento in September 1960, Henryk Schiller said:

Leaving aside the numerous and unquestionable charms of the work, it seems to me that Divertimento is an etude, a result of Baird’s initial studies into the twelve-note material, still unfamiliar to him at the time.