Friday, November 19, 2010

What is St. John's on Church Hill?

A few words about the new piece making its premiere at Sunday's Come & Play event in the words of the composer, D.J. Sparr...

The new piece is called “St. John’s on Church Hill” and it is a three-minute long fanfare. The work was inspired by the historical events that took place at the church in the time preceding the American Revolution… most notably the March 23, 1775 speech by Patrick Henry. It begins with long sustaining chords from the large section of strings and harps which is then build upon by the winds. Eventually, the brass come in with a melodic fanfare. This repeats three times getting shorter and more intense with each recapitulation. It is definitely an “American” sounding piece…If one likes Copland or Barber, this will be a good match.  When I arrange the other works for come and play, it is really about reducing the parts that are already there to something that is playable by a performer of any level, but in writing this new work, I could actually compose into the music parts that were easy to play but were structural to the piece. For instance, the chord that the strings play is performed by the participants. It uses all open strings, and the melody in the brass is based on notes from all of the open strings. An instrument like the harp will play easy glissandos, but the harp will be tuned to glissandos that are related to the chords structure of the piece. This forms the basis of what the more experienced players will play over, with the fanfare motive and climax.



A glance of what D.J. Sparr sees while composing his pieces...

Special thanks to Erin Freeman, Megan Osborne, Aimee Halbruner, Matt Gold, and Teka Phan for all of their help in this process.

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