2023; dur: 30; Wind Orch.; Score at Wise Music Classical
Symphony of Broken Anthems is a symphonic work for wind orchestra that plays with and comments on the heroic and heart-swelling elements of our world’s national anthems. The music builds upon and elaborates further many of the melodies and rhythms derived from a computer aided study of existing anthems, also used in Ratkje’s work National Anthems from 2022. Fragments of anthems, constructed and sometimes familiar, are thrown into the grinder, spit out and shaped into a heroic and absurd musical journey taking the form of a symphony in three parts (five with interludes):
First Movement: Rise Up And Sing
First Interlude: Hoisting Flags And Hoisting Flags
Second Movement: Forward, March, Up Again, Don’t Look
Second Interlude: Trembling, Heart-Swelling, Flags Waving In The Wind
Third Movement: Sinking Dust – Rising Smoke, Flags Waving Non-Stop
Commissioned by Det Norske Blåseensemble and Blåsarsymfonikerna.