SYMPHONY FOR WIND ORCHESTRA

Year of composition: 2012

Commissioned by The Southeastern Conference Band Directors Association (USA)

After dedicating over ten years creating large formal works for symphonic wind ensemble, most of them of a programmatic nature, this commissioned work by the consortium of bands of the SEC has been a great opportunity for the composer to create one of his most anticipated works in recent years: the composition of his first symphony. A work stripped of any hint of programmatic traits was founded on the basis of the great symphonic tradition of the 19th century, in which formal foundations and processes of motivic and thematic development were the generators and promoters of musical writing.

The work is a cyclical symphony, and although divided into four movements, it is clearly organized into two main parts: the first of which includes the Prologue and the second movement; the second main part includes the third movement and the Epilogue.

In the brief Prologue, marked in the score as Furioso, occurs insistently, almost obsessive with the motive generating most of the thematic material of the work and is simply an octave motive:

The second movement, Allegro Vivace, is written like the first movement in sonata form, a formal characteristic of the symphonic forms of the Classical and Romantic era. For this reason, the composer conceived the Prologue not as a first movement of the symphony but more accurately as an introduction to the Allegro Vivace. The fundamental structure (Exposition -Development- Recapitulation) is organized as follows:

Exposition  → Development  → Recapitulation 
(mm. 1-243)        (mm. 244-446)         (mm. 447-604)

In the third movement, the longest of the work, the composer fuses two characteristic forms of large symphonic genres into one: the overall form of ternary and the Scherzo and Trio.

       A                                         B                                      A’

       Adagio           Scherzo – Trio – Scherzo            Adagio

In order to create more cohesion in the third movement, the main theme of the Scherzo is actually a variation of the main theme of the initial Adagio, after an introduction built on a repeated octave motive first performed by the solo horn.

The Epilogue, which is an attacca directly from the end of the third movement Adagio, is a literal recapitulation of the initial Prologue, accentuating the cyclical character of the Symphony to which the composer has added a brilliant coda that brings the work to a grand conclusion. The composition ends on a powerful unison concert D, although not indicated in the title of the composition, it is clearly and determinedly the principal tonic of the entire composition.