Dreamflight – Benjamin E. Daniel

Description

Score Preview

Dreamflight depicts four scenes from a flying dream.

The first scene is called ‘Finding the Wings’. This is a peaceful, moderato movement that builds up in intensity into the following movement, ‘Thrill of Flight’.

‘Thrill of Flight’ is an allegro march-like movement that combines emotions of exhilaration and fear. The movement is meant to convey the bravery, fun, and sometimes, danger of flying. Near the end of the movement, listen for the tension in the chords that lead up to a descending chromatic scale. This is meant to capture the feeling of tumbling out of the sky. However, the flyer recovers and moves on into the next scene. ‘Thrill of Flight’ is followed by a slower interlude leading to the next movement called ‘Gliding’.

‘Gliding’ (adagio moderato) begins softly with a peaceful melody, but then it moves into a section with building harmonic tension, its volume rises and the movement resolves to the original melody, but it is played as a grand rhapsody by the entire ensemble. The movement closes with a soft recapitulation of its main melody with a dissonant note sequence that resolves to the tonic chord.

The final movement, ‘Ever Skyward’, begins abruptly with a sharp staccato note. This is a spirited movement that revisits the three previous melodies heard in the earlier movements, but it finishes with a build up to the theme heard in ‘Thrill of Flight’, which finishes with a grand climax. The name ‘Ever Skyward’ comes from the Leonardo Da Vinci quote, “For once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will long to return.”