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A Musical Memorial Reflecting The Mournful Morning
by
Tiffany Alfonso
SEPTEMBER THE ELEVENTH has a threshold of connotations: The Day of Infamy After
Pearl Harbor, The Day The World Stopped Turning, and in my terms, The Mournful
Morning. Influenced by this infamous tragedy, I composed a symphonic work for
organ and strings in which I aspired that it will be performed by a college
string orchestra and a local church organist. It was the Fantasia, Fugue, and
Chorale In D-Flat Minor that will paint a picture of The Mournful Morning's
events.
In this work, the theme was a tune from the "Harmonischer Liederschatz" that was
appropriately named "Franconia," written in 1738. Because of its majestic
harmonies and it's like a chorale, it was my appropriate choice for this. In the
fantasia and fugue, it was in a minor key, representing the agony and the fury
of The Mournful Morning, but in the chorale, it was in its original major key,
In the fantasia, the music starts out like a choir singing in a funeral Mass,
with the second violins having the melody. Then it sounds like a Bachian work
paraphrased in my own harmonies. At the end, it slows down, evoking a prediction
of what will happen next. It evokes images of the hijackers steering half of the
planes involved towards the Twin Towers, while people jumped out of the building
to escape it. Also, scenes of the Pentagon getting smacked by a plane and a
plane crash in rural Pennsylvania burst out in listener's minds. To me, it was
the most solemn remnant of the whole composition.
The fugue was a pretty energetic piece and it possesses a great deal of fury.
The first violins play the melody, then it continue down the line until the
cellos and organ play it almost in unison, with the bass playing its own line.
The violins play the melody closely in unison, after a fugal section, then
towards the end of this part the first violins play part of it an octave higher.
The fugue paint images of the fall of the towers, the plunge of one of the
Pentagon's walls, and President Bush taking action after a Secret Service agent
heralded the dolorific news.
In the chorale, it was very much like the first eight bars of the fantasia, but
it's a hair slower and in a major key. Afterwards, it closes with a cadenza that
seemed like a sung amen at the end of a hymn. A sole representation of the
aftermath, prayers and patriotism, it ended the piece in a resilient way.
In conclusion, I hoped this piece would be a musical and dignified memorial to
the victims of The Mournful Morning and it would be performed on every other
September eleventh on each year. May God continue to bless and protect America.
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