My thesis composition "Music for Brass Quintet" is a two-movement work of approximately ten minutes in length. The first movement begins with the most elemental of gestures; two notes F and G, some long, suggesting the fragments of an as yet unformed melody, and some short, rapidly repeated with a manic insistence. As the opening ideas are passed between the five instruments, the texture gradually becomes a swirl of activity. Moving through a series of harmonic areas, the music eventually reaches something of an arrival point upon which the dense polyphonic texture instantly switches to a kind of stop-time chorus where tutti articulations of harmonies are immediately followed by solo statements from various members of the quintet. After fou...