Works

for Bernardo Silva and his colleagues of the Trompas Lusas horn quartet

I-Intrada II-Fanfara III-Epilogue

Instrumentation (detailed)

Winds and Brass

4 Horn

Performer(s)

HORNPHONY was commissioned by Bernardo Silva to be premiered by his quartet Trompas Lusas at the «1st Trompas Lusas Meeting» at Espinho, in October/2010. Departing from a few drafts saved for years, I developed these and added a significant amount of new material (namely all the first movement Intrada). What I intend in this piece is, beside the purely musical material, to illustrate some of the horn most charismatic features, namely the bouchê, the cuivrêz, the mute or the fanfare/choral sound masses, as well as the bells up and the large musical phrases, to me so intrinsically linked to the horn timbre. The overall form is a kind of triptych (slow-fast-slow), in which the external movements (Intrada and Epilogue) are essentially meditative and long, while the central Fanfara is very fast and brief, albeit its richness of musical material. This last movement is in itself a king synthesis of the all piece, for its own ternary form ABA' (slow-fast-slow), plus a meditative coda and a surreal "call" of the first horn in half-valves at the end, summarizes the whole idea of the work. Finally the title, Hornphony, is an agglutination of the English words horn and symphony. The use of the first is obvious, while symphony is used here in its etymological sense, meaning "to play together". Hence Hornphony should be understood as "horns playing together".

Work	Type	Date	Organization/Event	Venue	Town	Country	Performers	Notes	Inv Row
Hornphony	Premiere	2010/Oct/17		Espinho Auditorium	Espinho	Portugal	Trompas Lusas Quartet [J. Bernardo Silva, Bruno Rafael, Nuno Costa e Hugo Sousa]	Notes

Documents
	Type (+ sub-type)	Cover/edition title Document title	Authors	Referring to	Publisher	Date
	Audio	Trompas Lusas  Hornphony		hornphony Luís Carvalho	Afinaudio	2012 2012