Fanfare Alone

Ilana Rainero-de Haan’s Fanfare was the result of a college assignment to write one-minute fanfares for trumpet. She writes, “While I wanted to stay true to the meaning of a fanfare — meaning many 4^th, 5^th, and octaves, as well as some short-long rhythmic motifs that can be heard most prominently towards the end of the piece — I also wanted it to sound a little ‘off’ or quirky. I accomplished this by writing quarter, half, and whole notes where one might expect sixteenth or eighth notes and having them slide up an interval of a 7^th or a 9^th. I also put emphasis on dissonant grace notes and erratic rhythms towards the middle of the piece. Although the piece emphasizes sounds atypical of fanfares, it builds up to a triumphant, fanfare-like finish.”

About the composer:  Ilana Rainero-de Haan was born in San Francisco, California. She began to compose as a 15-year-old student at The Walden School, a summer music composition camp in New Hampshire. In 2008 she was awarded the ASCAP Irving Berlin summer camp scholarship and a commission to write a piece for the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, which was premiered in New York City and Philadelphia in June 2010. She continued her composition studies as a Music major with Professor Robert Pound at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. Her senior year, she was the winner of the prestigious Weiss Prize, for which she composed and conducted her senior thesis, Enter : Life. She graduated magna cum laude in 2012, after which she moved to Bologna, Italy to pursue an MA in Arts Management. She graduated in October 2014 and now works in the artistic department at San Francisco Opera.

from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem Alone:

“From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone — … ”

In asking Morgan about this piece, he shared the following:

“Alone, composed for a dear friend and colleague, James Darling, then a member of The Cleveland Orchestra (1973-2005), has had numerous performances since its birth in 1973. Ray Sasaki (b. 1948), Professor Emeritus of Trumpet at The University of Texas-Austin, has performed it the most. I remember his [Ray’s] first performance of the work in 1975 or ’76 at The Cultural Center in Chicago. It was a noon concert performed by the Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Illinois-Champaign, an avant-garde chamber ensemble. Ray opened the concert performing “Alone,” which begins with a loud flourish followed by a remarkably soft response. During that softness, an older woman sitting up front, turned to her friend and in an audible voice said, ‘I thought chamber music was flutes.’ Containing himself, Ray carried on. I am happy and proud to have Jack Sutte, presently of The Cleveland Orchestra, give his artistry to this work.”

When discussing with Morgan preparations for recording this fanfare, he shared:

“The music is difficult, not only technically, but in conception as well, for it turns on a pin from one idea/emotion to another — e.g., harsh to pretty, aggressive to submission, strict to improvised. These you must trust and embrace. It has one learning, going forward, and stopping suddenly, instead of running in a straight line to a visible/audible destination. The general approach I take is: ‘Here is my gift to you. I made it, now make it yours.’ This is out of my high regard for the performer and his/her artistry. It may be because I am a performer that I understand and respect the performer to this extent. Take liberties with it — literally as well as figuratively.”

The Fanfare written by Philip de Oliveira is conceived in two versions — one for solo trumpet and the other for trumpet and piano. Philip writes of this work, “Since there have been countless fanfares composed over the years, my own Fanfare may be heard as the hollow echo left over after these thousands of fanfares have been played. It would have never occurred to me to write my own fanfare unless I had been asked, and it was certainly a pleasant challenge to try and put my own stamp on a seemingly exhausted genre (although I do refer to some immediately recognizable gestures, especially the angsty ‘repeated note’ made popular by [Fisher] Tull and others). Like most of my shorter pieces, this work has an agitated middle section and wistful bookends — in this case [the bookend material is] taken from five notes which are stated very plainly at the beginning.”

Fennelly wrote of this work, “Distant Call”:

“Two things made the writing of this fanfare challenging; the first was that I don’t usually compose for unaccompanied instruments — preferring to allow myself to wallow in lush polytonal harmonies, and the second was that I hadn’t written much music for solo brass instruments, in particular. However, Jack Sutte’s devotion to championing the work of living composers and the honor I felt when he requested music from me far outstripped any trepidation I might have felt. And, I like the trumpet!”

The composer’s comments about this piece:

“Clare Fanfare uses a little compositional trick as its primary gesture: the musical notes and/or solfège syllables C – la (A) – A – re (D) – E are presented emphatically at the beginning, middle, and end of this short piece. My daughter was attending Clare College, Cambridge University, at the time I wrote this work, and this piece became a tiny tribute to that connection. The rest of the fanfare consists of an irregularly metered cheeky scherzo theme which is expanded to a climax — high in the trumpet’s register — the second time it comes around. I had fun playing around with dynamic contrasts, the dramatic change of timbre when the mute is used, and the surprisingly large range of the trumpet.”

—Margi Griebling-Haigh

This significant work for solo trumpet has joyed and perplexed trumpeters for over 50 years.

When studying this piece, I considered the following questions:

“What do I do with this second movement? — the first movement is OK.”

“Where can I find a low F trumpet to try?”

“What mouthpiece do I use?”

“Can I even play the F trumpet?

“The second movement as written?!?”

With the advent and improvements of the 4-valve B-flat trumpet, the low tessitura notes written for the F trumpet in 1966 are now plausible and possible without too much consternation. This recording features a custom Schilke B3-4, (4-valve trumpet).

Wolpe’s commentary about this piece include this program note for a concert by Ronald Anderson, to whom the work was dedicated in Alice Tully Hall, New York, October 6, 1971: “Many of the musical concerns found in a multifocal and spendthrift way in the Enactments, the Piece for Two Instrumental Units, and the Symphony are found in a more economical and rarefied manner in this work of concrete phrases, asymmetrical events, and implied polyphony.”

Additionally, in Eric Salzman’s book, Twentieth-Century Music: An Introduction, Salzman describes Wolpe’s own economical description in his quote above in an expanded way. Salzman writes, “… [Works] … are built on tiny, cell-like structures which retain their essential, immovable identity through every kind of registral, rhythmic, dynamic, and color shift; the formal result is a kind of accumulation of potential energies which twist, turn, combine and recombine, destroy and reconstruct an apparently unyielding material.”

Notable earlier recordings of Wolpe’s “Solo Piece” include those by Reinhold Friedrich, Gerard Schwarz, and Raymond Mase.

“Christopher Buchenholz has created the coolest modern solo piece for piccolo trumpet.”

—Jack Sutte

The composer has written:

“’Salience’ can refer to something remarkable or spectacular — like a fanfare. It also refers to something that streams upward — like a fountain. I prefer the image of an animal in springing motion, about to attack. Trumpets are like that. Fanfares often project the first overtones of the harmonic series, the pitches of a major triad. Flourishes, on the other hand, often navigate the space in between. This piece is an exploration of both.

In 2013, I was serving as a Visiting Professor with the National University of Ireland. I had gotten sober in 2011 and was alone, in a foreign country, struggling to write. Jack Sutte reached out and asked me if I would contribute a new piece for his CD. This little piece, for piccolo trumpet, combines set-theoretic, serial, and diatonic/triadic elements, and pursues a continuing interest in rhythmic complexity. I know it is a bitch to play, and Jack plays the hell out of it. I want to thank you Jack, for helping me move towards fluidity and fluency at a very tender time.”

In my request letter to The Kobalt Music Group, the publisher who handles the rights to Ornette Coleman’s music, for permission to adapt his Chanting from his Virgin Beauty Album (1988) into a version for unaccompanied trumpet, I indicated that I would strive to preserve the melody in its purest form, and to perform the melody in a “classical” performance idiom. Permission was granted, and as a brief backstory to my connection to Ornette’s music will follow, this chanting melody is one of the most beautiful and haunting I have encountered — so much so that it has inspired me to write my own “chanting” compositions. Chanting is performed on a Schilke E3L-4 trumpet.

This recording of Chanting is a way of thanking both Ornette (now posthumously) and Joel Sachs, for the opportunity and experience to work with Ornette on the recording of The Sacred Mind of Johnny Dolphin, with The New Juilliard Ensemble. Working with Ornette and the entire ensemble in his Harlem studio was very memorable — especially in the hunt for the super high notes. His albums are superb, and ultimately inspiring, especially The Shape of Jazz to Come, The Empty Fox Hole, and those encompassing Harmolodic musical language: Tone Dialing, Sound Museum: Hidden Man, and Sound Museum: Three Women, the latter three dating from when I was a student in New York.

The trumpet part of “Johnny Dolphin” is so difficult (most of it is in the upper tessitura), that my Juilliard-mate Kevin Finamore (now Second Trumpet in the Dallas Symphony) and I divided the part equally. We performed the work in 1997 with Joel Sachs and The New Juilliard Ensemble in Alice Tully Hall. Kevin and I may have been the first two to divide the part between two players. Few have had the experience to perform this piece, though I encourage readers to explore this 2009 link from the FONT Festival, featuring Wilmer Wise and Lew Soloff: sacred mind of johnny dolphin | Improvised Communications (wordpress.com)

Three Ditties is a three-movement work for solo trumpet based on musical cryptograms that also serve as the title for each movement: 1. Egg(s), 2. Bead(s), 3. Eff(anfare). The letters in these titles make up all notes used in each movement (only E’s and G’s are used in the first movement, etc.). Three Ditties was written for trumpeter Jack Sutte.

Jean Baptiste Arban’s Complete Celebrated Technique for Cornet has been considered one of the required tomes for trumpet players. Near the end of its four volumes, it contains fourteen characteristic studies, which feature several well-known melodies that have been made into virtuosic theme and variations. As a student, I, like many trumpet players, spent years practicing the combination or lyrical playing and agility required to tackle Arban’s method, and this fanfare pays homage to many of Arban’s stereotypical motives in a slightly distorted and exaggerated manner.

The composer has written about this work:

“This short declamatory piece was written in 1966 when I was a student at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and in response to a commission from the Guild for the Promotion of Welsh Music. As the title suggests, the solo trumpet imitates the voice of an orator using forceful, persuasive language with frequent repetition, gradually turning the attitudes of the audience in favor of new ideas.

It is obvious you can call to mind the style of memorable speakers or characters such as Martin Luther King, Marc Antony, Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, and any number of Welsh preachers or black evangelists or politicians.”

—John Hearne, January 2021

When asked to describe this work, the composer submitted the following:

“Urban Dictionary: Origin from ‘hijacked’: as the past-progressive meaning stolen in a violent fashion.

1. Robbery, theft, misuse, seizure, possession.
2. Well-muscled, iron-bound, pumped.
3. Fu@&ed up
4. Messed up
5. Really cool or weird

“Nothing is a mistake, no matter how it sounds or feels. Everything is just right. Jacked was composed in 2013 for my dear friend Jack Sutte.”

—Paul Rudy

The composer has offered the following commentary about this work:

“Lyricism and reflection inform these two movements for solo trumpet, as studies in lyricism and lyric form. Like lyric poetry, lyric forms in music rely on regular recurrence.  In poetry, the recurrence is often in the form of rhymes, end or internal. In music it is simply the return of the same or similar musical materials (a motive, a phrase, or a melody). Each of these movements employs refrains in different ways.

“The melody of the first movement, ‘differing rivers,’ returns time and again to the same two-note refrain via the same series of pitches. But each of the paths through that series begins on a different pitch and each path differs rhythmically. One might compare the experience with crossing a river. An ancient philosopher said that you can never enter the same river twice. If our series of pitches mirrors a river, the constancy of the two-note refrain suggests that we always arrive at the same far bank. Our varying paths across it represent the difference in the river each time we cross it. To a certain degree this suggests variations on our musical subject, but this is variation without embellishment, without the insertion of different pitches among the original ones. In a slightly contrasting middle section, another new musical subject is similarly employed. The subject of the middle section becomes fastened to the initial melody to form elongated, elaborate, and expansive lines in the final section, not unlike the conjoining of two tributaries.

“The verse-refrain pattern informs the second movement, ’sky diapason,’ as well, but the verses and refrains share materials and transform one another throughout the piece. One may hear segments of the opening phrase recur in lower registers, in different rhythms, louder or softer. The new version of the segment may in turn be combined with a different segment, yielding new materials occurring later. One can distinguish verses from refrains simply by the nature of articulation; the verses are legato, smooth, connected while the refrains comprise accented, short notes. Otherwise, both verses and refrains share materials and inform each other’s evolution.

“Another aspect of lyricism is explored in this composition; the quality of the lines and of the music in general are intended to suggest ease and intimacy, a personal quality. In the case of the second movement, this apparent ease and gentility belie the vast range over which the trumpet must stretch the phrases, which is technically very difficult. Almost every phrase explores either the high extreme of the range or the low (and occasionally both), but demands a dignified, stately quality at all times.

“Musical reflection often involves the inversion of musical materials against one another: one melody rises in a certain pattern; another descends in the same pattern. That obviously compares to visual reflections. But here, the musical reflections also compare with the extra-musical, cognitive, even emotional act of reflection, the act of reconsidering events, objects, and/or people from different perspectives, removed in time, emotional state, physical condition, etc.”

—Robert Pound, November 2000 (revised 2020)

The composer/performer offers the following as explanation of his Modern Love:

“The first movement of Modern Lore was my third composition, written while I was a student at Juilliard. My first two works, Up on the House Top, now lost, and another for mouthpiece alone, unnamed and also lost, were both written in high school and were collectively my first attempts at composing. Having learned that established composers had already written works for mouthpiece alone (though composed more recently — thinking now of Håkan Hardenberger’s performance of HK Gruber’s Busking — totally awesome) I became deflated in my efforts knowing that there were already works for the mouthpiece alone genre. I gave up. I certainly do not recommend this course of action now, and in the immortal words of Jimmy Valvano, “Never give up … never ever give up.” In other words, toot your own mouthpiece or follow your inspirations.

“Up on the House Top, I think, was somehow tied to and oriented around a Wisconsin winter, an ideal Christmas tune, and blasting a frozen Old Lang Syne from my growing-up-family-home’s sloped roof, and while hand-written (pre-Sibelius) and from what I remember being somewhat clever, this half-page composition lacked seriousness, though I remember it fondly as a brilliant starting point. Ahh, youth! The idea of a piece for mouthpiece suddenly seems a vibrant idea.

“While living in New York, I became fascinated and inspired with new music, and working with Raymond Mase, Chris Gekker, and the ABQ folk (Powell, Wakefield, and Rojak) in school, it only increased my desire to listen to and learn more 20^th century works. Joel Sachs, The New Juilliard Ensemble, and Continuum certainly added to this desire, as described in the Chanting notes. New music is a great passion of mine.

“I composed Freely during this past minute in New York. Finding it satisfactory many years later in Cleveland and while preparing for this project, I expanded the motifs in Freely to include two additional short movements: an ironic March-Fanfare which is sonically best performed in military boots (a commentary to “The Man”), and a reflective, somber, postlude-type song.”

—Jack Sutte, January 2021

The composer explains his intentions:

“The Seventh Trumpet is inspired by the dramatic events depicted in the Book of Revelation, 11:15-19. In this verse, the commencement of Judgement Day is heralded by a fanfare of seven trumpet-wielding angels. The piece begins as an interpretation of what this fanfare would sound like, while also conveying the fear, awe, and panic of those on Earth hearing the call. The piece transitions into a moment of serenity as the trumpet imitates the sound of a chanting priest reciting a passage from the verse: ‘The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets, […] and for destroying those who destroy the earth.’ In the final section of the piece, fire and fury are unleashed upon the world as the heavens open up and judgement begins, ultimately concluding with a low guttural moan from the Devil himself.”

—Kevin Johnson

In 2011, Ryan Karr was enrolled in a composition course at Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pennsylvania), when trumpeter Jack Sutte served a residency as visiting lecturer.  Sutte read through a number of fanfares for trumpet that the students had written as a class assignment and, after working with the young composers, he premiered two works in a public concert on campus, including Karr’s Fanfare.  Three years later, he recorded both as part of this project.  (The other Dickinson fanfare, by Rainero-de Haan, is the opening work on this album.  Connecting the dots further, the teacher of the composition course at Dickinson was Robert Pound, whose Music for Trumpet is also part of this recording.)

Of Karr’s fanfare, Sutte says:

“Karr’s trumpet fanfare incorporates a traditional quartal and quintal spelling of the harmonic series at first, but unlike traditional fanfares, Karr utilizes a varied approach to the composition — using lyric quarter-note gestures, along with call and response, or forte and piano dynamic interplay, within a 32nd-note motivic scheme boldly stated at the onset of the fanfare. In this loud and soft interplay, Karr directs the trumpeter to play “into” and “out of” the stand to further the dynamic effect, and these variants propel the second section of the fanfare to a rhythmically augmented conclusion that utilizes the first two notes of the second section’s theme in a two-octave juxtaposition.”

Jack Sutte comments on this work:

“I have found Ketting’s Intrada to be the most satisfying entrée into the genre of unaccompanied trumpet works. Also written for horn, I can imagine this composition would be successful on trombone or tuba, with the appropriate octave displacements, due to the quality of the composition. My first trumpet teacher, Dr. Patricia Backhaus, introduced this work to me and following additional study in college, it was my ‘Solo of Choice’ for my Cleveland Orchestra audition. As such, I hold this work dear to my heart, as it was not only part of my musical upbringing, but also a gatekeeper into my professional life.”

The performer and composer comment on this work:

“Between 1995 and 1997, I was finishing up my degree at Curtis and starting my graduate studies at Juilliard and had the opportunity to perform as a soloist with the Orquesta Sinfónica U.N. CUYO, Mendoza, Argentina, with the conductor David del Pino Klinge, and then later with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile in Santiago. It was during my time in Santiago, that I came across Guarello’s Solitario V for solo trumpet. This work is a hidden gem in our solo repertoire.”

—Jack Sutte

 “Written in 1991, Solitario V is a piece in three parts. The first is very active and based on a repeated pitch (C), contrasted by two ideas: the melodic and the rhythmic gesture. The second part (with Harmon mute) is a jazz-style moment creating passages of quasi-polyphony, through the use of ranges [intervallic] or of rapid dynamic contrast. The last section contrasts a melody of intervals of a second (gradual) with very quick, ascending arpeggios. Towards the end, these two gestures are fused, creating turns like very legato ascending scales, interrupted by residual staccato notes which finish the piece.”

—Alejandro Guarello

“My purpose in writing the Tre Romanze was to create a piece that would have contrasts both within and between movements, and to do so in a lyrical manner. While the piece is far from easy, it does not indulge in technical display, nor does it use any extended techniques. The word ‘Romanza’ in this context goes back to the French ‘roman’ or novel, to suggest an unspecified narrative.”

—David Loeb

What better way to conclude an album of brass works than with a march! Using stylistic tendencies from Sousa’s marches and his lesser-known operetta works, Rathbun’s intriguing musical language incorporates rhythmic and harmonic twists, all of which delivers a modern impression of Sousa’s historic voice with a fresh bouquet of 21st century colors.

The composer offers the following comments about this work:

“I was honored when Jack Sutte approached me about composing a solo trumpet piece for his album Fanfare Alone. Considering the varying personalities that the trumpet can produce, I decided to write something that paid homage to the Sousa march tradition, but with some contemporary harmonies thrown in at times. Re: Sousa begins in 2/2 with a short introduction before the first march appears in C major. As the phrases progress, there are brief atonal disruptions that interrupt the flow but the always march returns, seemingly unfazed. March No. 2, in 6/8, soon follows in B major with a different flow that the meter provides, and this march is plagued with occasional disruptions as well. After March No. 2 converts to the 2/2 meter, there is a short transition that leads us back to the C major of an abbreviated version of March No. 1, which ultimately resolves on a high C. Re: Sousa runs about two minutes, and can be performed on Trumpet in C or B-flat.”