Instrument: trumpet and piano with MP3
Grade: conservatoire
Catalogue No: 3139
ISMN No: 9790570662074
For solo trumpet with piano and performance MP3 download.
Composer David Mitchum explains:
Salamanders were, in mythology, thought to contain and be born of fire as well as being fire-proof and eternal. The mythological connotations that interested me when I came to write Salamandrine for Oscar Whight. 'Salamandrine' means 'like a salamander'. Thomas Hardy used it to describe the silent boilers of the now-drowned Titanic in his poem The Convergence of the Twain about the Titanic/Iceberg collision - the memory of the fire contained within the vessel.
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
So the piece is about inner fire and fieriness. I have tried to give the music a general air of imminent combustion. Each time the opening statement comes it is like an explosion. The more rhythmical sections feel like there's something simmering under the surface. The quiet section in the middle, with its washes of piano sound, suggests there is something trapped within - maybe something eternal.
The CD of Salamandrine and 7 other performances can be purchased online from Willowhayne Records, entitled Nexus (WHR093), to represent the collaborative nature of the project which evolved during the Covid pandemic.
