Forty Reasons to be Cheerful (Festive Overture) (a.k.a. Fanfare Festival) for Orchestra
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Date
2013
Authors
Koehne, G.
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Creative work
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This work (duration 7’) was commissioned by the Adelaide Festival Centre to celebrate its fortieth anniversary. The piece was premiered by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arvo Volmer on May 31 2013. “Forty Reasons to be Cheerful” represents a further creative investigation of the Quotidian aesthetic Koehne has been developing in recent years (and for which he acknowledges the guidance of his colleague Professor Mark Carroll). In this work he takes the most mundane (quotidian) of musical materials – a hackneyed harmonic progression much used in popular music since the Fifties – and subjects it to a process of continuous variation and elaboration while referencing stylistic features derived from the once ubiquitous light orchestral pop of the latter 20th Century. As the work was composed to accompany a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony Koehne sought to celebrate the often overlooked everyday, earthy features of this iconic work: simple folk-like melodies, marches and references to contemporary popular culture.