The Call

The Call is a seventeen-and-a-half minute, programmatic work for large orchestra. The program illustrates the first three stages of Joseph Campbell's outline for the Hero's Journey described in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Influenced by other compositions with a heroic theme, the piece pays a special homage to Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 and the Tone Poems of Richard Strauss. Set as a single movement work and divided into five sections, the program follows an unnamed hero as he progresses through the stages "The Call to Adventure," "The Refusal of the Call," and "Supernatural Aid." The analysis of The Call details how the themes associated with each stage are used to underscore the story of a hero's journey and metaphorically illustrate the hero's plight of being chosen to perform the tasks ahead. Formally designed in arch form, the main themes function as leitmotifs to symbolically represent the role of the main character within the stages of the Hero's Journey.