Fanfare for Mountains and Peace (2007)

I wanted to write a fanfare that celebrated both the distance and the connection between North and South America. I was particularly interested in writing a piece of music that represented the things I felt we had in common, such as beautiful, high mountains and a desire to live in friendship and peace. In order to represent these concepts, I used several musical devices throughout the composition—for example, the opening motif is a melodic major seventh, a wide interval, yet still contained within an octave. The major seventh returns throughout the piece. The opening percussive fanfare is ideally performed with musicians across the stage from each other, presenting an audible sense of distance, but creating one line of musical thought. As the piece progresses, the rhythmically motivated opening fanfare turns to dance-like motifs in the woodwinds, and is followed by a chorale for strings—a meditation on peace—before returning to an exuberant, fully orchestrated version of the opening fanfare. -A.M. Guzzo