Revolutionary (Music for Concord 1775) was commissioned by the Concord-Carlisle (MA) High School Bands, Christopher Noce (director), to honor the 250th anniversary of the first shots of the American Revolution. Rather than attempting to musically recreate the story of the revolution, I chose instead to focus on the more universal and abstract sense of defiance and moral courage that lay behind that revolution. As I prepared to compose, I read Paul Revere’s Ride by David Hackett Fischer, an excellent account of the events leading up to the American Revolution, and found inspiration in his discussion of the “alarms” which gradually pushed the Americans to an inevitable breaking point. The alarm system was developed by the Americans as a method to allow the colonists to be prepared for action by the British and, as tensions grew, these incidents included the famous Powder Alarm of 1774, the Portsmouth Alarm of 1774, and the Lexington Alarm of 1775, which finally initiated the war. Each of these alarms gradually motivated the Americans to organize and mobilize in preparation, and each seemed to represent a slightly more significant point of irritation between the two sides.

My piece is structured in three large sections, representing three “alarms” that gradually push the Americans to the brink of war. The pitch material for the piece is taken entirely from the opening phrase of Concord Hymn, a tune more widely known as the Doxology, which has been co-opted as the melody for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous poem of the same name concerning the events on April 19, 1775. The melody for Concord Hymn begins with four descending scalar notes followed by three ascending ones, and I have used these notes simultaneously to create a sort of diverging melodic line. The key areas for each of the three sections of the piece are focused on G, A, and B flat, which happen to be the first three notes of Concord Hymn, and the timpani serves as the “glue” that holds the piece together, initiating each section of the piece.

Each of the three sections uses essentially the same progression of materials, but each time filtered through a slightly different lens, beginning with the use of the G octatonic scale, which gives the opening a mysterious quality. This first “alarm” begins very quietly, more as an irritation than as an outright revolt. Gradually it builds, with alternating muted brass and drums (played with fingers), until reaching a first climactic passage of aggressive tension. The timpani then initiates the second section in A minor, beginning a little more strongly, as the second “alarm” begins to feel more serious and tangible. Again the music builds, this time with alternations between the woodwind family and drums (played with felt mallets), building to a much stronger climactic passage. Finally, the piece erupts into a celebratory final “alarm,” this time in B flat melodic major. The powerful beginning of this “alarm” continues into a climactic presentation of the Concord Hymn melody before concluding with a final tutti statement of strength and rebelliousness.

Revolutionary (Music for Concord 1775) bears one final, but important, relationship, and that is to Karel Husa’s monumental Music for Prague 1968, one of the single greatest statements of defiance through music ever composed. Written as a response to the Soviet invasion of his homeland in 1968, Husa’s work includes the use of powerful tutti triplet passages and a focus on the timpani as a vital instrumental color, both of which are used throughout my work. Ultimately, Revolutionary (Music for Concord 1775) is intended to similarly honor the courageous defiance of our forebears, who endured British persecution and, through a series of alarms, summoned the strength to forge a new nation.