Three Palindromes for trumpet (2019)

Movements:

i. SOLOS (Fanfare)

ii. NOON (Soliloquy)

iii. RACECAR (Ricercar)

You never have to look too far to find aspects of Robert Simpson’s music in my own, and the idea to write these palindromes came as a result of seeing the score of his 9th String Quartet, which is a set of 34 palindromic variations on the minuet from Haydn’s Symphony No. 47 which itself, is palindromic.

Each title is a palindrome itself. SOLOS makes reference to the famous solo trumpet piece, Solus by Stanley Friedman, which has an iconic fanfare motif in it played with the second valve slide missing. The fascinating metric shift from a triple feel to a duple one which occurs when you reverse the rhythms is perhaps its defining feature. NOON simply refers to the middle of the day, which, in a way, is the pivot point in the palindromic day. And finally, RACECAR is a pun on the musical form Ricercar. The music itself is less of a ricercar however, especially as it is the final movement, but it is closer to imitating a spluttering engine of a racing car, and even features a car horn tune at the pivot point.

This piece was written for my own 4th year trumpet recital as a second study at RCS in 2019.