Where Silence Echoes (Brass Quintet + Band Gr. 4)

Where Silence Echoes is a cleansing prayer for those who have unjustly lost their lives. Moving past the disinformation and corruption that surrounds them, the work aims to acknowledge their inherent goodness and humanity — to heal tortured spirits, hoping that the music finally places them at rest.

Genre: Solo Brass Quintet with Band | # of Players: Standard + 5
Series: Maturing
Level: 4 | Duration: 7:15

Instrumentation
Conductor's Score (A3 spiral bound)

Solo Trumpet/Flugelhorn 1
Solo Trumpet/Flugelhorn 2
Solo F Horn
Solo Trombone
Solo Tuba

Flute 1 (+ Piccolo)
Flute 2
Oboe
Bassoon
B-flat Clarinet 1
B-flat Clarinet 2
B-flat Clarinet 3
Bass Clarinet
Alto Saxophone 1
Alto Saxophone 2
Tenor Saxophone
Baritone Saxophone

B-flat Trumpet 1
B-flat Trumpet 2
B-flat Trumpet 3
F Horn 1
F Horn 2
F Horn 3
F Horn 4
Trombone 1
Trombone 2
Bass Trombone
Euphonium B.C.
B-flat Euphonium T.C.
Tuba
String Bass

Mallet Percussion 1A + 1B: Vibraphone (bowed)
Mallet Percussion 2A + 2B: Vibraphone (bowed)
Marimba + Large Tam-Tam

Program Notes
Where Silence Echoes is a cleansing prayer for those who have unjustly lost their lives. Moving past the disinformation and corruption that surrounds them, the work aims to acknowledge their inherent goodness and humanity. I felt drawn to write this work to heal tortured spirits, hoping that the music finally places them at rest.

Where silence echoes exists in two forms – the first for brass quintet and ensemble, the second for choir and ensemble. The brass quintet parts reflect the choral parts, with text taken from the sonnets of forgotten Australian author Zora Cross. Cross’s sonnets were published in a book entitled “Songs of Love and Life” and Australian soldiers were known to keep them in their back pockets, quoting from them in letters home to their wives and sweethearts. In Zora’s words I found the respite that I believe the many tortured souls of the Earth may seek:

In me, there is a vast and lonely place,
Where none, not even you, have in sight.
A wide, still vale of solitude and light,
Where Silence echoes into ebbing space.
…
So do we rise, Beloved, you and I
Up from the earth to which our reasons cling, Mounting the airy pathways of the night,
When Heaven’s hosannas fill the flaming sky
And while our thoughts among the meadows sing
We, with our God, dissolve at last in light.

Where Silence Echoes is an offering to the universe, a call for those who have passed in fear to rise from the earth and be amongst the meadows, so that they, at last, may dissolve in light.