Listen to Tiffany’s composition performed by the Queensland Youth Chamber Orchestra, 30 September 2020 at The Old Museum, Bowen Hills, Brisbane.
Listen to Tiffany’s original composition submitted with her entry.
Tiffany Yeo is a 15-year old student composer from Brisbane Girls Grammar School. She began studying music at a very young age, playing the piano and violin. Growing up in a family of musicians, her passion for music grew as she started composing for voice, piano and violin, expanding to orchestral ensembles. She has been a member of the Queensland Youth Orchestra. In 2017, she was selected to work with John Foreman and Taylor Henderson to write the song “Shine Together” for the Australia Music: Count Us In Program. She was the first prize winner of the instrumental section of the 2017, 2018 and 2019 Australian Society of Music Educators Young Composers Competition, as well as the Composers Competition organised by the Queensland Music Teachers’ Association. Her works have been described by her mentor Erik Griswold as “polished, emotional and powerful”. Tiffany’s work “Love and Peace” was premiered by the combined Chamber Strings and Vivaldi Strings at Girls Grammar’s International Women’s Day Concert in 2018. She also won the Combined Strings Composition Competition organized by Girls Grammar and debuted her orchestral work “Tango Grandioso” at the International Women’s Day on 6 March 2020.
Composition Inspiration
Fanfare Grandioso was inspired by Grand Fanfare by Giancarlo Castro D’Addona, which bristled with catchy rhythms and sweeping melodic lines. I intended to compose a piece that would be catchy to grab the attention of concert goers and with mounting melodic tension to hasten them back to their seats. Fanfare grandioso is a majestic orchestral fanfare that explores texture and timbre while interweaving two contrasting melodies and maintaining familiarity using repetitions. I structured the piece within a tertiary form and brainstormed for ideas to develop throughout the piece. The opening staccato melody in the brass is derived from a 3-note rhythmic motif: a quaver and two semiquavers. Not long after, a contrasting countermelody in the cello sweeps across the strings to create an interesting contrapuntal effect. This is taken over by the woodwinds. The next section begins with a horn solo playing a 2-bar melody that aims to lighten the mood and unload the tension before the rest of the orchestra joins in to mount an exciting climax. Finally, the familiar brass melody is heard again as a final fanfare call but in a contrasting key, building in intensity before a grand conclusion using the same punctuated rhythmic motif.
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