THE FIFTH TRUMPET (score)

When John Wallace formed the Wallace Collection, he brought together the finest trumpet players in the United Kingdom. Legendary names of the past such as John Wilbraham and David Mason joined forces with the finest up-and-coming players such as Mark Bennett and Robert Farley. Their first concert was to be in the Queen Elizabeth Hall and John Wallace, then my trumpet teacher at the Royal College of Music, asked me to compose a piece for this remarkable ensemble. I wanted to create a work that would leave a message and provoke thought as well as being a demonstration of virtuosity.
The biblical story of the seven trumpets of the apocalypse from The Book of Revelation lended itself to this instrumentation as well as my intention. Here was the profoundest allegory that responds to the results of man’s inhumanity to man and his environment spawning suffering and torment in the most dramatic ways. The parallels with the horrors of war need no elaboration.
The Fifth Trumpet describes an initial vision of Heaven from which the Fifth Angel blows his trumpet. A star falls from heaven creating an earthly abyss from which smoke pours and the locusts with scorpion stings inflict months of agony on mankind who seek the solace of death. But death evades them. The programmatic intent of the story should be apparent in the clearly defined sections of the piece. A range of trumpets are used: piccolo trumpets, natural trumpets in old pitch keys, Eb, Bb and bass trumpets. Together with these are percussion, piano and either organ (as in the original score) or 2 ‘cellos and 3 basses (as in this revision). The trumpet writing pushes the instruments to extreme limits, not least the 5th trumpet part, which has specific solo passages and which was written for John Wallace.

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