In January 2005, Steven Jobe composed the slow movement Trouverité, based on a poem he wrote in 1984, which became the center of gravity for the other three movements he wrote that winter and spring. Four Movements summarizes the sounds he has worked with in the past: folk, medieval, and circus waltz. In reviewing the piece, composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez “enjoyed the integration of Medieval dance rhythms and Baroque figuration in contemporary harmonic context.” The piece had its premiere in May 2005 and it enabled him to win the Composition Fellowship from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts that year.

Four Movements is in memory of his father, Carl Frederick Jobe (1930-2000).

Commissioned by bassoonist Jim Morgan, a leading exponent of the French bassoon in New England, Jobe endeavored to create a musical landscape appropriate for the unique timbre of the instrument and for the remarkable abilities of the soloist. Jim Macnie, in The Providence Phoenix, June 9^th 2006, noted that the “deft use of repetition helps make the music’s intricacies moving in a seductive manner.”