Altitude was written in the summer of 1977, at the request of Elgar Howarth.  The music portrays an imaginary fight at an extreme height – cold, solitary, tranquil, and yet swift and mobile.

The form is roughly as follows:-

(i)    A fast, but harmonically static opening section, with a long melody in the tubas;
(ii)    A slower, more flowing section, beginning with a descending theme played by a solo cornet;
(iii)    Tense development of previous material, culminating in a full fortissimo statement of the cornet’s theme.
(iv)    A long, gradual crescendo superimposing several layers of texture, and building up to a climax in which the opening theme appears augmented in the trombones and tubas;
(v)    Final appearance of the cornet’s theme;
(vi)    Repeat of the beginning (with alterations in orchestration) converging on a single note (D) and disappearing in a flash.

George Benjamin