"A Midsummer Fantasy" (1998), for trumpet ensemble with organ ad libitum

Recording data:
Live recording, September 19th, 1998, TrompetenEnsemble Linz.

AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION
In the Summer 1997, when I was on vacation in the mountains as usual, I met by chance a member of the TrompetenEnsemble Linz, an Austrian trumpet ensemble especially devoted to ancient music and to contemporary music, and we became friends. We began to discuss the project of a new piece of mine for them, a piece that, in my opinion, was to combine their two interests (also in order to combine properly with other pieces in their concerts), that is to join suggestions from ancient music and contemporary music research. This combination matched my interests very much, so, after a while, I started to compose the piece. Indeed, from a poetical and stylistic point of view, this composition combines suggestions from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream", from the world of forest elves as narrated in many fairy-tales, from an atonal revisitation of the 17th Century Italian recitative style (Monteverdi, Caccini, that - not casually - have been chosen as Shakespeare's contemporaries) expressed by the solo first trumpet, but uses also passages that suggest the reminiscence of distant, echoing fanfares, and particularly evocative harmonies that should be regarded as partly derived from the modern French school. In simpler words, it is as if this piece were "a fairy tale in music" (just like Monteverdi's "Orfeo"), where the narrator (the solo trumpet), with his Monteverdian recitativos, leads us in a world of elves and magic forests, represented by the fascinating, coloured chord passages. The spatial distribution of the instruments, indicated on the score, plays also an important role, especially in the "fanfare" passages when the different instruments seem to call each other from different locations, or in the long passage in which the sound seems to rotate in the space (bars 44-68, from 2':22" to 3':10"). The piece has two slightly different versions, corresponding to different possible configurations of the Ensemble: thus, it can be played by eight trumpets without organ, or by six trumpets and an organ, the part of the two remaining trumpets being adapted for the right hand part of the keyboard player (as in this recording).
The problem of harmonic motion analysis has been treated in a special way in this composition, my target being - from a purely technical point of view - an optimal mastering of the harmonic features of the piece: that is, from this point of view the entire piece can be regarded as a training to gain control on the behaviour of chords and to build an equilibrated form through an attentive use of harmony.

So, basically, I began to conceive this piece while talking with a member of the ensemble on the balcony of his house, hidden in the magic of a mountain fir forest, in the Alps, near the Italian-Austrian border, an area where I love to go. It has been affected by my love for ancient music and for fairy tales. "Ancient music," also because that is the usual repertoire of that ensemble. So you'll hear echoes (and more than echoes) of Monteverdi's recitativos (I adore Monteverdi!), and baroque fanfares. And "fairy tales", because of the influence of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream" with its elves calling each other in the forest, and because of those peculiar, evocative rich chords. And also because there is a "narrator of the story", the soloist first trumpet with its recitativos.