I've always loved a good fanfare.
It rouses the spirit.
Since movies first flickered on screen fanfares have played a part in the scores of fantasy films.
The first one I recall was the coming home melody from The Vikings starring chiseled heart-throb Kirk Douglas in 1958.
Its a suitably uplifting melody blasted out of the Danes' huge Alpenhorn and you can hear it, as with all the horns to come, courtesy of You Tube. The real brass section is at 2.17.
The next cornets of note were those mammoth trumpets of the Tournament Parade in Disney's Robin Hood! A classic elefanfare! ha ha. I'm amazed its as late as 1973 this film. I thought it was from the Sixties!
Next up is perhaps my favourite musical pageant, the majestic and towering notes from the Star Trek episode Who Mourns Adonais but I always think of it simply as the one where the God Apollo grows massively tall!
There is a beautiful and godly six note horn motif that plays when Apollo appears now and then but I can't find a clip of it. You can hear a version of it at the start of this segment. Its what trumpets were made for!
Incidentally you can even see a modern interview with the buff actor who played Apollo on the Tube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZvipKq8890
No list of heraldic blowing would be complete without A Fanfare for the Common Man, Emerson Lake and Palmer's grand 1977 opus and a masterclass in rock pageantry, the kind of thing Punk Rockers detested I imagine! Rock excess, yes!
To finish I will end with a modern flourish, the dizzying melody as the Fellowship of the Ring pass the Argonath, the gigantic stone sentinels guarding the sea.
Not so much a fanfare I admit but it is an epic haunting elegy soldiered by roiling kettle drums.
Awe-inspiring.
Awe-inspiring.
What fanfares blow your way readers?
