Composer’s Note:

The title for Apparition weaves the first five-note trumpet entrance of Shostakovich Symphony XI [(The Year 1905) and all that this symphony represented to Shostakovich in the sense of a Requiem for his generation] with Bach’s The Art of the Fugue [and all that represents to me in the context of the human spirit]. There was the conjuring up of ghostly images from the past as I set pencil to paper, yet Apparition also is a celebratory work honoring those two great composers as well as honoring the art of timpani performance-practice by pushing the technical and musical envelopes to the extreme pinnacle of “Baroque virtuosity” as Bach did with his violin and keyboard repertory.