for brass, timpani and percussion (1992)
3-6.3(1 in D, 2 in C).3.1 timp+2
score available from
Wise Music
program note
I was not aware of the passing of Aaron Copland (1900-1990) when I started writing this fanfare early in 1992. After some initial sketches, I came across a compilation of Copland’s music that contained, among other things, his Fanfare for the Common Man. I knew the Emmerson, Lake and Palmer prog-rock version but not Copland’s original score. Upon listening to it, I was amazed at the incredible space in the piece. It’s not often that you can say that a 3-minute piece sounded more like 10 minutes and intend it as a compliment. I didn’t intend to write a similar piece, though his fanfare grew on me in an irrepressible way. It evokes a great sense of optimism about life and this is something that I search for in music. This fanfare, dedicated to Copland’s memory, was commissioned by the ABC as part of its 60th birthday celebrations and first performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with Vladimir Verbitsky (conductor) at the Melbourne Concert Hall on 20 March 1993.
reviews
“Greenbaum’s Aaron Copland ‘In Memoriam’…it was inventive resourceful and good-humored music.”
Kenneth Hince, The Age, March 1993
“Stuart Greenbaum, made his presence felt with a short curtain raiser called Aaron Copland ‘In Memoriam’, one of a series of fanfares commissioned by the ABC. With its flaring brass and robust assault on percussion instruments, the piece came across alternately as a prelude appropriate to Armageddon and a flourish of the sort one associates with the pomp of, say, the state arrival of a monarch.”
Neville Cohn, The West Australian, July 1993
“The fanfare by Stuart Greenbaum which opened WASO’s Great Classics (July 16) had much to celebrate. One of the “Aussie Fanfares” commissioned by the ABC for this series, it used jagged brass and often sadistically struck percussion to create a sense of nervous pomp and flourish.”
Ken Gasmier, WA Sunday Times, July 1993