Faith Springs Fanfare Trumpet Duet
I am slow getting this posted. I began working on this post the day after the event, but then I was distracted with other business activities and never finished and posted it.
I think that’s just the way things are going to have to be for a while while I figure out a flow that works for all of this stuff. So please bear with me.
This morning I finalized a trumpet duet fanfare that I wrote to celebrate our church’s completion of the new building. We had a special event on Sunday, beginning in the old building, then moving the congregation into the fellowship hall of the new building. Jason Brown and I played the Faith Springs Fanfare at the doorway, then we lead the congregation to the new building with the oldest of the “saints” leading the way.
If you have been following me for a while, then you know that, to me, this is where we find real music. Real music is what happens when we make a human connection to the audience. In this case, that audience is the congregation. This “human connection” philosophy of mine played a major role in the composition of this fanfare and I wanted to share some thoughts about the process here.
Pastor Greg Williams
Let me first say that I’ve been working on this fanfare for over a year. Pastor Greg mentioned the idea to me in mid 2021 and I spent a lot of time thinking about a fanfare that would work the way he was describing it.
To put some of this in context, I need to tell you just a little bit about Pastor Greg Williams. The closest thing I’ve seen to what he does at Faith Springs is my uncle Geoff. Like my uncle, Pastor Greg is an accomplished pianist and singer. Like my uncle, he loves the hymns. My uncle is also an ordained minister. But what I find amazing is that Pastor Greg brings all that together into one package. He does the music and the preaching. And the thing is, he does them very well, at a very high level.
So, when he was telling me about his ideas for a fanfare, this was coming from someone who knows music AND more importantly, understands it’s importance.
On a side note, I would love to sit down to interview Pastor Greg about the music side of his career some day. The interview thing hasn’t been working out so well, but I haven’t given up on it yet. And Pastor Greg is one of those people I have had on my mind to interview.
Faith Springs Fanfare Process
Okay, now that you see where this fanfare was coming from, you can better understand the process that went into creating it.
When you look at the fanfare, you see that it is only one page of music. And in fact, there are only four measures of discrete material. Everything else is repetition. The full piece is only twelve measures long. So you might ask yourself, how does it take over a year to compose that?
When it was done (on the morning of the event), I told Pearl that the difficulty was mostly in deciding what NOT to write. Thinking about this fanfare for so long generated enough material for half a dozen compositions. I don’t say this hyperbolically. I mean it in a very real sense. A number of very nice compositions found their beginnings in my thoughts about this fanfare. But they were not precisely right for what Pastor Greg was describing to me.
Process of Elimination
It wasn’t a problem of coming up with ideas. It was about making sure that the ideas were right for the event. Most of the ideas that I didn’t use were to complex. They were busy and too composition rich. The very last unused idea was in eight-eight time, with a 3-2-3 subdivision pattern. I’ve documented that idea and it WILL be used in a future composition, but it wasn’t right for what Pastor Greg was talking about.
And even if he had never described to me what he was envisioning, I have been doing this long enough to know that there is nothing to gain from writing inappropriately. There are a lot of wonderfully clever compositions that are terribly inappropriate for most events. Cleverness elevates and celebrates the mind of the composer. People can say their “ooohs” and “aaaahs” and pat the composer on the back, telling him how clever he is. But the truth is, clever music is often inappropriate. And I didn’t want that for the Faith Springs Fanfare.
Early in the process, the Faith Springs Fanfare was going to be for only one trumpet, but the more I worked on it, the more I felt it needed a second part.
One of the things Pastor Greg kept referring to was the ancient sound of the trumpets. Early trumpets didn’t have valves. The notes of the natural trumpets are derived from the overtone series. The problem is that the overtone series is less obvious with a single instrument. Yes, the notes are there, but they are horizontal instead of vertical. In other words, they are melodic instead harmonic. By adding a second part, I was able to emphasize that ancient sound that he was looking for.
Composing in Faith
As we got closer to the event, and I still didn’t have a workable theme, I had to believe, in faith, that God would provide the answer. For those of you who follow me online, you have heard me say that I believe that the musical ideas I “receive” are gifts from God. When I went to sleep Saturday evening, I knew God would have an answer for me in the morning and that I would wake up early, write that answer down, and have it ready in time for church that morning.
That is precisely what happened!
This is the part that most people don’t understand. When I went to bed Saturday night, it looked like I had NOTHING because there was no material evidence that any work had been done. But my mind had already worked its way through an entire process and there was only one last thing that needed to be done. I needed a theme that would work under all of those parameters. The year and a half that lead up to Saturday night served to clarify those parameters. The Faith Springs Fanfare would not exist as it is without that clarification.
All that was left was to hear from God for a theme that would work within those parameters. As I said, I went to sleep Saturday night with the other trumpet player already hired, knowing that God would provide that theme.
He did!
I woke Sunday morning with the fanfare ringing in my mind’s ear. I sat at the computer, typed out the notes, printed it and took it to church. Jason and I did a very fast run-through when he got there and we were ready to lead everyone to the new building!
Publishing the Faith Springs Fanfare
This morning I transposed the Faith Springs Fanfare down a step so that it would be appropriate for the next duet book in our series (not to be confused with the Trumpet Hymn Duets series). The next book in the series will have no duets that go higher than G above the staff. The original Faith Springs Fanfare went up to A. I’m considering making it the first duet in the new book.
The way we’ve been releasing duets lately is to publish them first as individual pieces. When we have enough for a full book, then we publish them again in that format. For the duets that are part of a suite, we will sometimes publish them three different ways; individual, as a suite, and in the book. It takes a lot more effort to publish that way, but not everyone wants to buy a full book. People like the convenience of being able to purchase only the duets they want.
Faith Springs Fanfare will eventually be available as an individual duet and in the book when it comes out. The publishing process takes a long time. I can only really publish one per week and I have over 30 pieces that are finished, waiting to be published now. So I cannot say right now when the Faith Springs Fanfare will be made available.
If you have an interest in trumpet music, then we invite you to check out our online store where we sell most of our published trumpet materials. The store is called Tiger Music.
