compositions

Trumpet Concerto

excerpt from part I

Sinfonia Mississauga
Conductor: John Barnum
Trumpet: Erik Schultz
Living Arts Centre
Mississauga, Ontario

Duration: 23 minutes

Written: 1997

Instrumentation:

Trumpet Solo
Strings Orchestra

Movements:

Part 1

Prologue (The Narrator)
Adagietto (Death of a Maiden)
Presto (The Satyre)

Part II

Lento (The Princess)
Epilogue (The Narrator)

Background

An unsophisticated and cynical brute, a demonic and ugly creature, a satyre, emerged from the deep to ruin the life of an unsuspecting family. He pierced the arrow of silence through the throat of the father, whose duty it was to alert the others of an upcoming danger. He dishonored the wife, the husband’s divine maiden, and her soul died in despair. He left the child of the family, the little princess in grief, scarred for life. Such could have been life in one’s homeland during the years of conflict. The terror of war, betrayal and surrender unmasks paingul realities.

As early as I can remember, everyday, hourly in Krakow, I heard a trumpet call interrupted by the arousal of war. When faced with writing a trumpet concerto, I couldn’t divorce myself from the ingrained childhood memory of the fanfare. I, as the narrator, built the concerto around this call. The avove stroy is ficional, but it culd happen in any war or even in a time of peace.