One Day Wonder #207

For 1 horn, 1 trumpet, 1 trombone and tuba

Well, with all of the loudness of #206, I thought I’d go for something much lighter. I inventoried past pieces and discovered that I haven’t yet written a jig-like invention in ritornello form. When I started it, I had no sounds floating around my head just begging to be put down on the page. That’s not a big deal. It happens a lot. I chose the key (a nice, peppy Eb), the time signature (3/8, also peppy) and got to work. The only thing I knew for sure is that it would be a ritornello. All that means is that it returns to the main theme again and again. It’s also known as a rondo – to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to. For the purposes of the piece, it meant that the theme should probably be a short A1-A2 form and that it would be better if it wasn’t completely annoying, because it comes back again and again. OK, so this is all I had when I started out. After that, the tune seemed to write itself. Three hours later, I had a three-minute-long piece. And it’s a gem. It just keeps chugging along until it gets to the quasi-march section – I needed to write something to contrast all the lightness. This really is one of my favorites of the project. It’s conventional to the extreme, but there’s enough weird stuff about it to defy expectation and appeal to the ear. Here it is, late November. It’s cold and gloomy outside (which makes Belltown look particularly ugly), Christmas is fast approaching and I’m feeling in a bit of a post-#200 malaise. But this piece comes out of nowhere and really cheers me up. Thank you, nice little piece!