The Lighting of the Beacons (Spec Cue)

Spec score for a fantasy scene in which signal fires ignite across mountain peaks, one after another. Goal: build urgency and turn despair into hope. Solution: French horn, violin, piano, cello and percussion; a modulation from D minor to D major as the main theme ignites, secondary dominants pushing forward like each fire, and strings thickening from eighth notes to a sixteenth-note ostinato. Ends on an unresolved borrowed chord.