Contestants were asked to create a piece around the theme of Fireworks. 11 members signed up and the contest begins NOW! Deadline to vote is July 31st at 5 pm EST. Thanks to all who signed up and good luck! Members may vote here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5JL2WSF
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Composer A - "Freedom Rocks"
Freedom_Rocks.mp3
Freedom_Rocks.pdf
Composer B - "Quintet"
https://youtu.be/_x50anQTyCo
Composer C - "There Will Never Again Be Night"
Composer's Description:
There will never again be night!
Enchanted by the City's first electric street lights,
the crowds ignore the fireworks display
at midnight of July 1st, 1893.
This piece reminds us that, what today we take for granted and goes unnoticed, was once more extraordinary and stunning than fireworks. The piece describes the documented historical events that took place on July 1st, 1893, in an unnamed city (to be revealed later). The city's first electric street lights were scheduled to be turned on at 9 p.m., and crowds flowed in from near and far for the event. Technical difficulties (despite the presence of an electrical engineer from Switzerland!) led to various false starts. It was close to midnight when the lights finally went on. Fireworks had been scheduled for midnight, but so enchanted were the crowds to see the city lit up by electricity, that the fireworks display was ignored. The second part of the piece expresses this stunned sense of wonder where time seem to stretch in response to our ecstasy. An experience we have when we watch fireworks on the Fourth of July, oblivious of the wonder we've lived in for more than a century -- a world with no night!
There_Will_Never_Again_Be_Night.mp3
There_Will_Never_Again_Be_Night.pdf
Composer D - "Love at Summers Fireworks Competition"
https://youtu.be/YGcBwnQXty4
Composer's Description:
0:00-0:41 : 2 people are watching firework and suddenly they begin to remember the event, where they have met.
0:42-2:07 : At that event they are inside a house with a lot of friends. They meet and start talking. After a while they are going outside for a walk (You know everything perfect: full moon, fireflies.... :D ).
2:08-3:00 : Suddely the guy remembers, that in a few minutes there will be a huge firework. He invites the girl to watch and says that there is a very good spot where the can watch. They start to run and when they arrive it...
3:01- 3:23: Begins! Quietly, but very melodic. All around them.
3:24- 3:43: The guy invites the girl for a dance. She accepts.
3:44- 4:04: As the dance, they start to fall in love (Oh the beautiful romance! :D). They promise that they will meet the next day.
4:05- 4:25: The dance slowly stops, because they realized that...
4:26-4:59: the firework is still going, but very intense. They watch it till the end and feel that this night will never be forgotten.
Love_at_Summers_Firework_Competition.pdf
Composer E - "Guy Fawkes on the Prowl"
Composer's Description:
In November 1605, the infamous Gunpowder Plot took place in which some Catholics, most famously Guy Fawkes, plotted to blow up James I, the first of the Stuart kings of England. The story is remembered each November 5th when ‘Guys’ are burned accompanied by fireworks in a celebration known as “Bonfire Night”. Catholics in England had expected King James to be more tolerant of them. In fact, he had proved to be the opposite and had ordered all Catholic priests to leave England. This so angered some Catholics that they decided to kill James and put his daughter Elizabeth on the throne ensuring that she was a Catholic. This led to a plot to kill not only the king of England, James, but also everyone sitting in the Houses of Parliament at the same time as James was there when he opened Parliament on November 5th, 1605.
Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, having rented out a house beside the Houses of Parliament, managed to get 36 barrels of gunpowder into a cellar of the House of Lords. Fortunately the plot was discovered before the gunpowder could be set off.
This music depicts the plotting and accompanying nefarious activities that came close to altering the course of English history.
Guy_Fawkes_on_the_Prowl.mp3
Guy_Fawkes_on_the_Prowl.pdf
Composer F - "Summer 4th Fireworks"
Summer_4th_Fireworks_Horn.pdf
Summer_4th_Fireworks_Trumpet.pdf
Summer_4th_Fireworks.mp3
Composer G - "Threnody"
Composer's Description:
This piece commemorates the untimely death of one of the composer's high school acquaintances in a house fire believed to have been started by a stray firecracker during New Year festivities. This incident, in which several other students also died shortly thereafter and the remaining survivors sustained lifelong scars, deeply affected the composer, who developed a distaste for festivities and fireworks.
The music begins with a series of quotations of the opening theme from the Overture of Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks", in various modifications, set against a background of musical imitations of fireworks exploding into flower patterns and streaming fiery trailers. This gradually builds up into a grandiose, but somewhat crass celebration.
At the peak of the celebration the music enters a short transition depicting a stray firecracker launching into the air and falling upon the roof of a house. Tension builds as fire breaks out and begins to spread, with Handel's theme being quoted in modified and increasingly grotesque forms, until all descends into chaos ending with a terrific crash, depicting the collapse of a roof beam thought to have killed the composer's schoolmate instantly.
An extended lamentation is then taken up in the third and final section, based on a theme built from an enigmatic sequence of notes said to be the composer's encoding of his schoolmate's name into music. The lamentation ends with the first five notes of this sequence, ostensibly an abbreviated reference to the schoolmate's name, as though in a final outcry of farewell. The piece then closes with one last quotation of the Handel theme, clouded by sombre chords in the strings that subsequently descend into the darkness and fade away.
Threnody.mp3
Threnody.pdf
Composer H - "A Dragon, a Phoenix and a Gnat, Caught in a Fireworks Display During a Thunderstorm over the Sumida River."
Composer's Description (Partial, the full description contains non-English characters and is attached as a PDF):
A Musical Work for Full Orchestra (Strings, Brass, Woodwinds and Percussion), Eleven Pianos (three of the pianos tuned up one quarter tone), Harpsichord, Cathedral Organ and Two Japanese Kotos.
Dragon_Phoenix_and_Gnat_Caught_in_a_Fireworks_Display_During_a_Thun...
Dragon_Phoenix_and_Gnat_for_Four_Pianos.pdf
Composers_Description.pdf
Composer I - "Sketch for a Bottle Rocket"
https://youtu.be/F3wke8GElXk
Sketch_for_a_Bottle_Rocket.pdf
Composer J - "I Wish for Fireworks"
https://youtu.be/NnC4g23pBww
I_Wish_For_Fireworks.pdf
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