Gallus Rex

Gallus Rex is the winning composition of the Eastern Standard Trio‘s 2019 Composition Contest. The inspiration for the piece came from a couple different sources. One was a visit to the University of Delaware by composer David Osbon in March 2019, during which he spoke on the power of musical gesture over traditional harmonic and melodic constructs – in other words, “who cares about harmony? Everyone play the line in unison!” Around that same time of year, I was walking outside the music building and heard the sound of a wind chamber group rehearsing a fabulously intense piece with incredible rhythmic energy. I have no idea what the piece was, but the brief snippet I heard sparked my imagination. These two influences combined to propel the musical direction of Gallus Rex. The piece is rather unconcerned with subtlety, pitting two unrelenting, driving bookends against a middle section marked “With Pompous Mischief.” The title is meant to sound sophisticated, while in reality it is just a rough Latin translation of “The Chicken King.” It is derived partially from an image of a swaggering chicken that the mischievous middle section brought to my mind, partially from the “pecky” nature of the opening gesture, and partially from the resemblance of one of the recurrent rhythmic motives to the end of the funk tune “The Chicken.”