The Falcon's Trumpet

The Falcon’s Trumpet was written for Stuart Laughton, who had been a member of the Wolf Project for many years, and therefore shared with me a love for the Canadian wilderness. Most of the work was written while I was giving a course at the University of Strasbourg and I have no doubt that my nostalgia for the Canadian lakes and forests strongly influenced the conception of this piece, in particular its unusual layout, with groups of instruments spread on stage, in the wings and in the auditorium behind the audience.

I had done this before (for instance, in Lustro), but my intention was different here; I was trying to catch something of the spacious resonance when a trumpet plays across a lake at dawn or sunset causing the whole forest to echo and vibrate. At the end of the work I added a soprano, Wendy Humphries, another “Wolf” who frequently sang aubades and nocturnes with Stuart (see Wolf Music) and also the Princess’s aria in The Princess of the Stars.

Of course, the sources of inspiration are never entirely pure, and one day I found myself incongruously adding the sound of a telephone in a Strasbourg bank to the texture, but it seemed inoffensive, so I left it there among the birds of the forest. R. Murray Schafer