One Day Wonder #186

For 2 horns, 1 trumpet, 2 trombones and tuba.

When I began this piece, I was intending to make it like a multi-sided conversation. While I was at college, I remember listening to a lot of serious music from the fifties and sixties that tried to do the same thing. Since it wants you to know it’s serious, it employs a lot of declamatory stuff that is usually contrasted with less declamatory stuff, thus giving us contrasts to think about and so forth. Above all, we’re supposed to believe in the seriousness of the music. I think that the best-known guy to write this kind of stuff was probably William Schumann. Although he enjoyed quite a reputation during his lifetime (he croaked in 1992) and won a Pulitzer Prize or two, I listen to his music with mild amusement these days. My apologies to Schumann fans, but his music has not aged well. It all sounds a little too earnest and pompous. That’s what I was trying to avoid here. And since I’ve been working with forms that require repetition, I decided to make this one as non-repetitive as I could. I really like this one. It stays in four the whole time, manages to sound somewhat different and actually does have that “conversational” aspect to it.