In memory of Bruce Firkins

Euphonie

(A work for trombone choir and tuba.)

Listen:

Windows Media

Quicktime

Download the Score as a PDF file. 

Download the parts for Euphonie as a PDF file.

(For ease of performance, the score and parts are a fourth lower than the midi demo recording.)

This piece is dedicated to the memory of Bruce Firkins, the public school teacher and band director who started me in music when I was twelve years old.  The brass writing is influenced from several sources, including Leoš Janáček (especially the Sinfonietta,) Benjamin Britten (especially The War Requiem,) and the progressive big band work of Stan Kenton.  As a young person I discovered some of Kenton’s recordings, such as “City of Glass ,” and loved his use of rich, extended brass harmonies (in the early sixties he even included a section of mellophoniums in his band.)  And most of all, I am still strongly influenced by Bruce, who was a tuba player’s tuba player.  He loved brass music, and it was he who taught me to love the extended harmonies used in this work.

In music, we speak of dissonance and harmony in chords, but I sometimes wonder if there might be a third category called euphony -- a kind of rich chordal music with a sense of movement that intimates some sort of unity that goes far beyond mere harmony.  Music can show us how to be harmonious, but it can also reveal a kind of wholeness where all things are connected.  In that sense, this work is also dedicated to all music educators.  They bring so much euphony to the world.

The work was written for the students of my wife's trombone chamber music institute in Trossingen, Germany and if all goes as planned will be premiered by them in December 2008.