Update Title: 11F15E52-1D31-4BF6-83CB-C571899CF7AA

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On November 23, 1963 Jack Murphy solemnly entered the band room at Santa Rosa High School, stopped the band in mid-rehearsal and made the announcement that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.  Thus did I become aware of one of those fateful events whose images seem unaltered by the passage of time or by one's age?  For an entire generation, that event seems as fresh now as then.  One specific memory from this tragedy has continued to haunt me to this day; that of the rider-less horse which accompanied the funeral cortege.  Perhaps, because I have returned to the place (i.e. Santa Rosa) where I experienced this first of what was to become a series of cataclysmic assassinations, the memory of the rider-less horse has been intensely disturbing me for the past two years.

Another image that has been bouncing off the walls of my brain is that of a slow, deliberate ceremonial procession of Buddist Monks that I witnessed during my two year stay in Korea.  This sacred ritual was accompanied by the doleful sounds of gongs and the slow but mesmerizingly persistent boom of a 12-foot diametered drum plus the uncompromisingly harsh sounds of traditional Korean wind and string instruments.  Hoping that by using these two images as inspiration for a composition I would be able to exorcise them from my mind, I started composing The Dark Horse.

While emotions of the Kennedy assassination were stronger and generated the expressive qualities of the melodies, it was the ritual procession of the Buddhist Monks that suggested the musical structure.  In fact, at one point I thought of calling the work, The Dark Horse, a procession for orchestra.  Structurally, then, The Dark Horse, is a dingle movement work whose broad formal outlines consist of an introduction, the main body of the work, and a closing section reminiscent of the introduction.  Three melodies of very similar character are repeated one after the other in the same order for most of the main section.  Supporting the melodies is a passacaglia figure consisting of 8 dyads descending by half steps with the top pitch D remaining constant.  The tonal center of the work then, is D major.  Ironically, the most easily heard presentation of the melodies supported by the passacaglia figure is not in the beginning but at the close of the main section where the solo violin is accompanied by two trombones.  However, there is no mission the beginning of the main section when the oboe states all three melodies contrasted by a sparse but at this point passacaglia-less background.  When the melody enters, it is the most active music at that time in the piece.  Gradually, the background textures become more active and thicker until they become the dominating forces leading to the climax of the work.  From there, tensions slowly but surely release until the violin brings back the melodies in the feeling of a recapitulation.  --Theodore Dollarhide

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