The Fire Within for orchestra (2022)

Premiere: Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniel Knaggs, cond., Sofia Symphonic Summit, Bulgaria

Duration:  ca. 10 min

Listen below to excerpts of The Fire Within, performed by the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra:

Program Notes:

The Fire Within (2022) is a musical reflection on inspiration and its correlation to facets of life more broadly.
In a common metaphorical comparison, inspiration is likened to a spark—an agent that comes into contact with flammable materials, possibly transferring enough thermal energy to ignite a fire.

At an early stage of this composition’s inception, the title The Fire Within continued to surface as the best summary of the underlying ideas, both musical and non-musical, that propelled it from start to finish. Any composer’s approach to portraying fire in music is both individual and inevitably influenced by sensory experience. In the present case, the musical imagery I sought to suggest involves such concepts as flying sparks, glowing embers, flickering and even raging flames.

The reflective aspect of The Fire Within grows out of my own quest to infuse ardent inner thoughts and ideas into a musical statement that can convey at least part of their original ardor. Just as the controlled use of fire can be viewed as a critically important “discovery” for humanity, so too the harnessing of what one might call “the fire within” could also be seen as an essential ongoing discovery, especially for musicians and artists of all types.

In the broader sphere of human life, the discovery of “inner fire” strikes me as essential but not sufficient in and of itself. Every age has its challenges, sometimes offering various incentives to succumb to the destructive (and self-destructive) possibilities of the fire within each of us in divisiveness, in inflammatory rhetoric, in dehumanizing those with whom we disagree… But to harness this fire’s ability to bring warmth and light in the form of creativity, compassion, and courage is a necessary alternative. I find hope in recognizing that humans are uniquely equipped to pursue these goods and others like them, if they so choose. –DK