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Title: Moving Theme for a Melodic Instrument
Year: 2005
Credits: Ben Tilus, trumpet
Zach's Role: Piano
Description: This modern duet for trumpet and piano attempts to place itself squarely amid the work of 20th-century composers. With the barest of nods to functional harmony, the piece departs completely from circle progressions, remarkably containing no dominant-tonic progressions. Instead, the harmonies move almost entirely by thirds, which ironically creates a more circular effect. The melody begins with an innocent three-note motive. But an unseen force compels the motive to keep moving. The restless motion of the song quickly carries this motive though numerous keys and chord settings, reaching a desperate climax of uncertainty before falling back the way it came, cycling back through the keys, and eventually landing, as if by accident, on a new harmonic idea.