Let the Trumpets Sound

It all started last summer when Conductor Eugene Goossens of the Cincinnati Symphony gazed into the blue vacation waters off the Maine coast. What could he do in the war effort? What music would forward the spirit of the times? At length Conductor Goossens wrote to 26 modern composers asking for instrumental flourishes of the sort known as fanfares. Nineteen responded. Six Goossens fanfares are now being played by the NBC Orchestra in six weekly broadcasts of Music at War.* They are Morton Gould's Fanfare for Freedom; Henry Cowell's Fanfare for the Forces of Our Latin-American Allies; Paul Creston's Fanfare for Paratroopers; Felix Borowski's Fanfare for American Soldiers; Leo Sowerby's Fanfare for Airmen; Goossens' Fanfare for the Merchant Marine.

Sennets and Tuckets. Technically, a fanfare is a brief passage (from two to 25 seconds) for brasses, employed as an attention-getter for what follows. The Goossens fanfares, however, are more elaborate compositions, some scored for full orchestra, running as long as three minutes. Most of them explore themes suggested by their titles--Cowell's, for example, uses a Mexican air. Fanfare, a French word of possible Moorish derivation, is allied to the Elizabethan stage directions sennet (also senet, sennate, cynet, signet, signate) and tucket, both indicating musical flourishes. There are no musical samples extant of sennets and tuckets. Sennet may have derived from "seven," perhaps meant a seven-note trumpet call. Tucket most probably stems from the Italian toccata (meaning a touch), and in all likelihood originally signified a drum sound.

Great composers have not neglected the fanfare. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote one for four trumpets in the Christmas Cantata. Beethoven followed the traditional military style of trumpets in unison in Fidelia. Other flourishes are found in Handel, Schumann, Mendelssohn.

* NBC's New York studio, July 8--Aug. 12, 1:30-12 p.m.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.