One Day Wonder #294

For 4 horns, 4 trumpets and 4 trombones.

This will be the last of my original pieces, and even this one isn’t that original. I was so intrigued as to why #285 worked that I listened to it again and again trying to figure out what was happening where. I was a little disappointed that the climactic section wasn’t that climactic. For this piece, I wanted to lift that section and straighten it out to how it should be. How should it have been? Well, instead of being a component of the entire scheme, it stands out in an awkward way. It’s one of the pitfalls of writing minimalism; you have to walk the line between being too repetitive and dull and moving too fast, thus exposing the piece for its lack of melody. That latter thing is what happens in #285. Otherwise, I think the tune is tremendous – big-band minimalism with a good amount of punch. This version of it uses the same instrumentation, time signature (at least initially) and some deconstructed parts of #285. The biggest problem here was getting things started. I think that #285’s beginning is a lot stronger, but once the time changes from 6/8 to 9/8, the piece comes into its own. I’m especially fond of the smudgy horn parts. All of this is a prelude to the part that I wanted to fix. Instead of having the trumpet line descend in a sequence, I kept it pretty much in place, and I eliminated that weird shift to minor key. It was a little too jarring. Once that section plays itself out, I have everyone crescendo, briefly give the horn line to the trumpets and finish with another crescendo. And there you have it. Despite the somewhat weaker beginning, this piece is better than its predecessor. It sounds bigger and more refined. One way of approaching minimalism is to tell yourself that you’re building a machine that has to function in a certain way. This is a good analogy since minimalism sounds pretty mechanical. OK, so you’re building not just one machine, but several – ideally three: beginning, middle and end. These three machines have to have some kind of unity, but can’t be too similar, nor can they be too different. There’s the challenge. This piece responds well to it. As I’ve said before, I’m a little beyond liking or disliking these pieces, but if I was still in “like/dislike” territory, I would like this piece very much. From here on out, folks, I’ll be reworking the first six pieces of the project in reverse order. If I still understood the basic concept of fun, I would think that it would be fun.