And from the second stanza

One of the new works recently composed on sabbatical was a full-length, second-half-of-the-program symphony. My first symphony—Symphony No. 1 (“The Mystic”)—is scored for three woodwinds doubling cousins, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, strings, and antiphonal batteries of timpani and percussion. One timpanist and one percussionist each man a side of the stage and are referenced in the score as Stage Left and Stage Right with the orchestra between them. In five movements, the center of the work removes two trumpets to join percussion giving us antiphonal trumpets as well for that middle movement.

Based on Walt Whitman’s “The Mystic Trumpeter”, the work is framed around a fifteen-year-old choral setting of mine of Whitman’s “Beat, Beat Drums” (no better depiction of the ravages of war!) and orchestrated for the full forces. Thus, the work also employs a large chorus in the third and fifth movements.

Rather than paint the “Mystic Trumpeter” line by line, certain lines stood out as atmospheric guides in the work’s creation.

I hear thee, trumpeter—listening, alert, I catch thy notes, Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me, Now low, subdued—now in the distance lost.

And from the second stanza:

Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging,

And the third:

A holy calm descends, like dew, upon me,

In fact the work begins by highlighting the antiphonal timpani, each playing softly as if out of that mist, the works musical motif: ascending and descending scale fragments outlining C minor (C-D-Eb, F-Eb-D).

Whitman’s poem is in eight sections and my five movements by and large illustrate his last five stanzas, once we’re past the opening’s introduction: the feudal world, love, war, oppression, joy. And while the antiphonal trumpets and percussion are clearly featured in “war”, the work is not a trumpet feature, but very much a symphonic showcase with virtuosic passages for winds, strings, and horns as well.

While each movement works out the opening fragment in its own ways, moments that stand out are the harmonic shifts from C-minor to Db-major to a-minor in the first movement, the vascillating beauty of the D-major/d-minor modality shifts of the second, the Bb centered third, the helix matrix of the fourth torquing itself into a ball of tension until a quite unexpected e-minor tectonic shift juts a monolithic plate up out of the earth, preparing us for the b-minor tarantella of the final movement with a summing up of all themes until C-major becomes the inevitable “joy” the chorus shouts to the heavens.