Luminaries (Neuheit Euphonium)

Luminaries (Neuheit Euphonium) Difficulty Level: Advanced (Soloist), Difficult (Piano) Luminaries was Commissioned by Amy Schumaker Bliss for her featured artist performance at the 2017 International Womens Brass Conference at Rowan University, and consists of 4 movements: in Purple, Green & White Emmeline Pankhurst (b. Goulden) was a high-profile political activist and leader of the British Suffragette movement. Her actions and dedication to the cause ultimately secured women the ability to vote in 1918 (from 30 years old - in 1928, just months after her death, this was changed to 21 years). She remained politically active for the rest of her life, staying true to the Suffragette motto “Deeds, not words”. From 1908, the WSPU adopted the colour scheme of violet, white and green: purple symbolised dignity, white purity, and green hope. The music is determined and passionate, with occasional outbursts, moving from ‘tradition’ to a different way of thinking – starting as a duet with piano, with the euphonium eventually breaking free and establishing itself as the soloist, and also moving from ’traditional’ harmony to more unusual sounds. in Purple, Green & White Hildegard was a 12th-century Benedictine abbess, philosopher, composer, writer, visionary, polymath and Christian Mystic. She is also considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. From the age of three, she received visions from what she referred to as ‘The Shade of the Living Light’ that influenced her entire life and gave her deep spiritual insight. The word ‘Viriditas’ literally ‘greenness’) is a word that means vitality, fecundity, lushness, verdure, or growth, and was invented by Hildegard. She used it to refer to spiritual and physical health, often as a reflection of the divine word or as an aspect of the divine nature. The music is derived from one of Hildegard’s own compositions, O Frondens Virga. The piano often gives an echo of the solo line in heterophony to give the idea of vastness and space. in Red & White Hatshepsut, ‘Foremost of Noble Ladies’, had the longest female reign as pharaoh of an indigenous dynasty. She established strong trading networks, increasing the wealth of the dynasty. She was a prolific builder, commissioning hundreds of projects across Upper and Lower Egypt, including twin obelisks (at the time, the tallest in the world - the surviving one still the tallest ancient obelisk on Earth) at the Temple of Karnak. Her mortuary temple was the first to be located in the Valley of the Kings. She inaugurated a long, prosperous, peaceful era in Ancient Egypt. Red and white are the colours of the ceremonial Pschent/crown. The music has a regal, ceremonial fanfare opening. Alternative fingering creates a slightly ‘out of tune’, fragile sound, linking to the Egyptian trumpets (much like a post horn, but with a ‘broken’ harmonic series). The flowing passages in the middle of the moment represent the Nile, with antiphony between piano and soloist illustrating communication/trade networks. We finish with an illustration of the tallest obelisk; broken, but proud. in Black & White Margaret Hamilton (b. Heafield) is an American computer scientist and systems engineer. She is Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Lab, which developed onboard flight software for the Apollo space program. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2016 for her work on this. She is the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies, which developed around her own Universal Systems Language (DBTF). Black and white symbolise scientific precision and the written word, from a life of academia and engineering. Here, the music is all about precision. The addition of tin foil onto the piano strings should give the effect of the instrument sounding like a machine, constantly running and causing unusual sound effects between the two players.