Malcolm Arnold

The Forces Fanfare

Sir Malcolm Arnold has composed fanfares for various occasions, ranging from military ceremonies to Gerard Hoffnung's celebrated comic musical extravaganzas on London's South Bank. The Forces Fanfare was written in July 1991, to a request from The United States Air Force Band, who gave the first performance in Washington in September that year as part of their 50th Anniversary Gala Concert. With the American origin of the commission in mind, Sir Malcolm thought it appropriate to use a motif from his Sixth Symphony, a work written 25 years earlier whose second movement is an affectionate homage to a great American musician, Charlie Parker. This motif (taken from the Symphony's finale) becomes the main theme in the central section of the Fanfare, launched by the first pair of trumpets to an accompaniment of driving energy and vigour. Here, and in the slower sections that surround it, Sir Malcolm makes full use of the serried ranks of brass at his disposal, to which he adds timpani and a substantial array of percussion, all of which come into play as the Fanfare broadens out into its appropriately grandiose conclusion.