Composing a Fanfare for Symphony Orchestra
Earlier this year I was delighted and honoured to have been commissioned to write a short fanfare for Hallam Sinfonia (the orchestra I regularly play cello with) to open their 50th Anniversary Celebration concert. It was performed on 14th October 2023, and the video below is of the software audio from the score I created. (If you want to hear what Hallam Sinfonia sounds like in the flesh, you can book tickets to one of our concerts by visiting https://www.hallamsinfonia.org.uk/).
My first thoughts about this was that it was a fairly niche brief, in that most people can recognise a fanfare when they hear one, and fanfares tend to have a number of common features. My challenge was to write something which stayed true to the character of a fanfare while also putting my own spin on it. It also, of course, needed to be celebratory. And I was glad to be able to write something pretty upbeat and tuneful as I'd not had chance to work on something like that for a while.
While Hallam Sinfonia plays at a very high standard, is not a professional orchestra - we all just turn up and play for the joy of it. I began thinking about what 50 years of this really meant, and how wonderful it was that the love of music making had driven and sustained the orchestra for so long. This was especially apparent to me as I joined the orchestra pretty much just before the COVID-19 pandemic, and even then the orchestra continued with smaller concerts when it could, finally coming back together for a concert in the autumn of 2021 which I remember very fondly. The 50th anniversary concert itself was also programmed to celebrate the orchestra's origins and its drive to keep going - with Beethoven's 1st Symphony (appearing in the first ever concert given by the orchestra) and Brahms' 4th Symphony (part of a programme which was cancelled due to the pandemic).
So - the first section of the piece is a fairly long introduction in which pizzicato strings all play different divisions of the beat - some play 5 notes in each half of the bar, others 4, others 6 (these numbers will become relevant again later). The wind and brass gradually coalesce to build towards the main melody of the piece, which uses perfect fifths and octaves as you might expect from a fanfare. I was aware that the piece had to be relatively short, so another challenge was to include peaks and troughs within a short time-frame. This meant that I settled for one key throughout (Eb major - generally associated as being quite a triumphant key) but contrasted this with an opening and middle section that was perhaps more tonally ambiguous. One of the things I enjoy most about both composing and listening to music is finding ways in which a theme can be repurposed and appear in different ways - so this first theme acts as a basis for all the material in the piece.
The general structure of the piece is a crystallisation of the theme from disparate and contrasting places with an 'a' and 'b' section, then an exploration of that theme with a slightly darker tone, then a quieter more reflective section (I felt this was important as not only do you have to have light and shade to really appreciate a grander closing section to the piece, but we were also rightly remembering alumni of the orchestra who were no longer with us in the concert - there is light and shade to every celebration) followed by a triumphant finish, sort of inverting the order of the 'a' and 'b' section, and sort of overlapping them too.
The piece begins in 4/4, 4 beats in a bar. It then moves to 5 for the middle two sections, builds to 6 when the music comes back with full force, and finally finishes back in 4. I was basically trying to pack as much variety into about 4 minutes of music as I could without finding myself going on a complicated journey through different keys and chromatic notes. I also tried to use the number 5 as a numerical basis (to celebrate 5 decades) wherever I could - with prominent quintuplets, rhythms in 5 and of course intervals of a perfect 5th. I also ended the piece on the 5th - and although I was aiming for celebratory, victorious sort of tone, I wanted the piece to feel just as much like the beginning of something rather than the end - looking forward to the orchestra's future just as much as celebrating and reflecting on the past.
The final thing I did was give the piece a title. I spent ages trying to think of something, but I think ‘Shining Dawn’ suits the celebratory feel of the piece, as well as the idea of the celebrations being the beginning of something, rather than the end. The Latin word for gold, ‘aurum’, literally translates as ‘shining dawn’ - which was very fitting for a gold anniversary.
I have mentioned before how previous orchestral experiences were perhaps not the best - in the student setting I did find that I was being belittled and patronised by those who should have been encouraging me. Well - this process was the exact opposite. Jon Malaxetxebarria, the orchestra's new musical director, was absolutely fantastic both at conducting the piece (obviously) and communicating, rehearsing and encouraging. I felt very respected and privileged to have been a part of the concert. And proud of what I had written, which is often a difficult thing to feel!. I also received some great advice from Chris Noble (a new work from whom we will be playing in the spring, if you're interested!) during the composition process which was incredibly valuable and appreciated too.
It was a fantastically surreal experience to actually play in the orchestra for the premier of this piece too - and amazing to be surrounded by such a fantastic wall of sound, especially at the climax of the piece. I was also hoping that the finished product would be memorable enough for people to be humming the melody after the concert, and I've had a couple of reports of this exact thing happening so… mission accomplished!