Robert Johnson appears to be living the piece, using all the possible time he can find between work and family to practise the piece. It’s remarkable dedication and a composer could not ask for more.
His day job is principal horn with the Sydney Symphony. Ben Jacks also has that position and is now taking the [...]
The park next door to my home is getting an upgrade thanks to the federal government’s economic stimulus program. On Wednesday they were banging metal poles, one at a time, with a hammer. The steady tempo was quite pronounced and only slightly slower than the music we were trying to rehearse. This was very off-putting [...]
During the composition of Lightfall Robert Johnson and I met just a few times mostly so he could start to familiarise himself with the material. But since the concerto was finished we have been meeting at my home more and more frequently until now we are rehearsing for two hours, two or three times a [...]
When Robert Johnson and I had our first run throughs I muddled along on the piano but my ears soon rebelled in horror. Rob, being the scholar that he is, said nothing about my two-pawed pianism but became quite eager when I suggested I make up a synth mock-up of the orchestra for him to [...]
Lightfall for Horn and Orchestra will fill the second half of the concert at its premiere. The major work in the first half is the Cello Concerto in B Minor, Opus 104 by Antonin Dvorák. This grand, lyrical work is one of the most popular pieces in the repertoire.
You can read about Dvorák here and [...]
For any horn players that might want to look over the solo part here is the pdf (choose your size):
B4 size: Lightfall_SoloHorn(B4)
A4 size: Lightfall_SoloHorn(A4)
Lightfall is composed for a fairly standard orchestra, the significant difference being the exclusion of trumpets. This omission makes the solo horn the highest and brightest brass instrument in the performance.
The orchestral horns are under-utilized for the same reason and only play in the higher registers when they are echoing the soloist in canon. Even [...]
Well, I have spent far more time and words on analysis than I intended but there are two more features that need to be pointed out to complete the picture. [Don’t forget the full score can be downloaded and printed from here.]
A Melodic Cell
The solo horn’s semitone rise of b5 is added to in b8, the [...]
The first two notes (Db-D) that the solo horn plays are a semitone apart; when heard with the basses (Bb) they outline a minor third to a major third. This semitone cell journeys through Lightfall in many guises.
It would be tedious in the extreme to list every occurrence of the semitone cell so here are [...]
Whereas Part One is largely created with a melodic cycle, Part Two is created with a harmonic cycle. A group of seven chords is repeated over and over through the course of the movement.
The chords are in fact compressed from the opening phrases of the horn solo at the beginning of Part Two. This example [...]
