One Day Wonder #179 (Goodbye to Uncle Buff)

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

Uncle Buff (his real name was Berger) was a sailor. He was also quite the Norwegian. Perhaps those two things complemented each other. Either way, the guy could handle a boat like nobody’s business. He and my aunt had been living on their 55’ sailboat for the last twenty years or so. In addition to being a kickass skipper, Uncle Buff was also a hell of a nice guy. I’ve known him all my life and I already miss him like crazy. I wanted to write him some appropriate send-off music, so I decided to step away from the elegy. I’ve already expressed the strange sense of loss that I feel. For Uncle Buff, I decided to write a sea tune. OK, it’s not a sea shanty. A brass ensemble has a tough time with the lighter textures and extended lines of your ordinary shanty. For this, I wanted to write a spirited sea jaunt that has its say and fades into the distance. There aren’t any corresponding words at this point, but I’m thinking about lyrics for it, as its format is very much verse-chorus song form. The whole thing is almost completely diatonic – that is, it remains in the same key for the entire piece. There aren’t any accidentals or anything tonally adventurous. It’s harmonically unsurprising to the extreme, but it's the nature of the genre. I hope he can hear it where he is now.