Festival Music

Festival Music was written in 1997 and commissioned by Ikemiya Music in celebration of the 600th year anniversary of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan.The opening ceremonies took place at the Golden Pavilion, Festival Music premiered by members of the New York Philharmonic.

Since the Golden Pavilion is surrounded by water it was appropriate to base this composition on the very famous Hornpipe movement from Handel’s Water Music.

I thought I’d use Handel’s music in its original form to open the piece. After this initial statement I begin to develop Handel’s theme and put it through various compositional transformation both harmonically and melodically.

Instrumentation: trumpet in C or B-flat, horn in F, trombone, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello and contrabass