Day of Sounding | יום טרואה
for solo horn and resonating surface (2018)

Prelude: On Timelessness
I. Call
II. Scherzo - Trio
III. Alarm

"Yom Teruah" from translated from Hebrew to English as "Day of Shouting (or Blasting or Sounding)", is the name given to the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur. Jews around the world go to synogague to fulfill the commandment of hearing the sounds of the shofar -- which is exactly where I should have been instead of composing this solo horn work in September of 2018.

A hornist myself, I set out to write a piece that evoked both the ancient history of the horn and my own personal experience with the instrument. Thinking hard about it, I realized that my first exposure to the horn came not through middle school band, but as a child at synogague listening to the raw, brusque sounds emanating from the hollowed out ram's horn that served as an early predecessor to the instruments we play today.

The three movements are each based on types of shofar blasts that are stated in succession in the Prelude, Tekiah (teeee-aaaah) serves as the basis of the first movement, and is a a long call to attention. The three bursts of Shevarim (teee-ah, teee-ah, tee-ah) set off the Scherzo which works it's way to a Trio that nods both to the history of the hunting horn and to the wildly creative Belá Bartok whose mastery of harmony's relationship to harmonic spectra continues to move me. The third movement, "Alarm", is based on the rapid attacks of Shevarim (tee-tee-tee-tee-tee-tee-tee-tee-tee-aah). Every Jew knows that most exciting all shofar blasts is the Tekiah Gedolah (The BIG Tekiah) where the performer holds a Tekiah for as long as s/he possibly can, then rips the instrument from his/her lips with dramatic flourish. There's no better way to end a work for any kind of horn than the Tekiah Gedolah.