Fanfare for the One Who Makes the Construct

for Brass and Percussion

Score

Audio

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Notes from the Composer

In 2025, I started a series of digital orchestration projects. One of those was Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.

After I worked on the Copland, I found myself wanting to contribute to the body of fanfare works that have been influenced by it. Fanfare for the One Who Makes the Construct (2025) is a piece for a spacialized brass ensemble of 3 Trumpets, 3 Cornets, 2 Horns, 3 Trombones, Euphonium, 2 Tubas, Timpani, 2 Tam-tams, and 2 Snare Drums. Like the Copland, it is a piece of concert music that will also play a role in a larger work.

The construct is my jargon for the experiential reality made by each of our nervous systems. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, some of which produce electro-chemical responses that co-vary with external stimuli. Those signal travel through our nervous system to our brain, where various parts of our brain independently and asynchronously process this information, adding and supplementing it with information we “know” about the outside world. Then something truly magickal happens. Our brain (if you are a monist) or some as-yet unknown external thing (if you are a duelist) combines all of this information into a singular experience of reality, a construct that we habitually project back onto the world around us. And we are so good at this that most of us never notice we are doing it. Others occasionally notice, but quickly forget it.

Yet, every experience of reality we have ever had exists in the construct. Every sunset that left you speechless. Every meal that tasted so incredible. Also, every bit of pain you’ve ever felt. Every loss that left you feeling broken. All of it.

I wanted to write something to celebrate this unsung hero, without which the world would be an unordered and incomprehensible chaos of sensory signals. The One Who Makes the Construct is the personification of this part of all of our nervous system. It deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated.