One Day Wonder #125

For 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones and tuba.

The spell of the trombone is broken! It’s been a while since I’ve written a march. This one was a rough haul. I had to rewrite the intro four times and I’m still not happy with it. In some places, the feel is all wrong, but I tried very hard to make things work as best as they could. I was initially very disappointed with how this turned out. I thought the A theme, though expansive, was mostly pointless, the B theme was chattery and pointless and the C theme wasn't a theme at all, but more of a transition, as my brain was exhausted at the time. There had been so much rewriting going on, I couldn't face up to more. That was then. In the intervening time, I've become very fond of it. Once I recovered from the stress of getting something acceptable down on paper, I began to appreciate the not-quite-major, not-quite-minor quality of the A theme. Once I really began to listen to the tune, the terse, quarter-note plodding of the accompaniment became less of a problem. And the B theme isn't really all that bad. Yeah, it's does have a lot of notes going every which-way, but it serves as a nice contrast. The C theme is, let's face it, a transition, but it takes long enough to get through so that it seems like a genuine section. My favorite part is the second iteration of the A theme, when the trumpet jumps in with a countermelody. It's cool how the focus of the piece changes to the trumpet, even though it isn't playing very strong material. The same thing happens in #74 on the A theme's second iteration. Here you have three horns chugging away, but all you hear is the trumpet floating over them. It's a neat trick. No, I didn't invent it. It's been around for a long time, but it's nice to stumble onto it. OK, so it's a good piece. I still dislike the intro, but the rest of it goes down just fine.