Ballad of a Fire
Jeremy H.
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This piece is a ballad about the fire I have personally experienced. It has 2 meanings; one symbolizing an actual fire, a spark of ignition, with ebbs and flows, culminating in a large blaze, and then dying out. The second meaning is a parallel to passion. Specifically, my own passion towards music. It starts of with a bit of amateurish, abrupt, but soulful melody with a flugelhorn solo, as it joins a selection of trumpets and the whole band in a beautiful chord. The band progresses through dissonance and dynamic variation, symbolic of many hardships I have personally experienced, and is similar to many musicians often stopping as they face struggle. The swell of voices into a large booming chord is similar to when a fire begins to blaze, with the heat of your own passion burning at its brightest, showing off your own talents and skills. It proceeds to burn brighter and brighter, while still having its own unpredictable nature. As the fire burns its fuel, it begins to calm down. It starts to show signs of death, but goes out peacefully, showing its fulfillment. The fire has finished what it has started, and is ready to move on to the next phase of its life.
The process for this piece was a bit of a woozy. I began work on 12/30, after taking a long vacation abroad, and had time to think about a lot of things in my life. I was unhappy with the conditions of my music program, with myself as a student often taking the helm and leading the program and doing things a student should not have to do to help a school succeed. I was inspired by my time in DCI with the Vanguard Cadets, and how much I loved it there, but it has since died out. I was messing with some chords on a transcription software, and decided to keep adding on, and adding on, and adding on. Late that night, I realized I had something, and said I was done, and it was finished. Yet, the next day, all I could do was add more. suddenly everything clicked together as I spent the first moments of the new year putting work into this piece, and I had realized a personal connection to the score. Writing this piece was more of a personal form of therapy, allowing myself to figure things out as I wrote. Today, (1/1/23) a friend of mine said that it sounded amazing, and that I should submit it to the BACF, and well, here I am.
I hope whoever is reading this or listening to the piece can share the same joy of music, and while the MIDI track does not do the techniques full justice, I hope I will be able to have a band play this arrangement in full at a later date.
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Music has given me a reason and canvas to explore who I am, and to express my own thoughts that often cannot be expressed through words alone. This piece is an example of that, with many aspects of myself reflected in its tone.
