M-R Music's Wind Band Report No. 3

Jeff Girard and M-R Music present

The Wind Band Report

Issue 3 - Grade 6 Band works

Vol. 1, No. 3 September 2013

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Hello fellow band director, and and welcome our third issue of The Wind Band Report. I'm Jeff Girard, and my specialty is the wind band realm. As promised, this week's issue is for the college directors in particular. I'm sure there are a few high schools that can perform some of these works, but most of these pieces call for bands with extended instrumentation and near-professional skill levels. All of these works will be a real challenge to you and to your players.

Here are a few recommendations I think can help fill the need of challenging music that is worthwhile for directors, students, and audience members. For most of these, you can click the item's image to download a pdf of the partial or complete score.

Symphony No. 6

Andrew Boysen

I had the pleasure of working with Andrew Boysen for a year when I was a graduate at Indiana State University. He was very laid back and very smart. I knew that he was a composer and remember hearing a story about him writing down musical ideas on a cocktail napkin in a bar when an inspiration had struck him. But I didn't realize then what a major composer he would become over the years.

His sixth symphony was written for his good friend Andrew Mast at Lawrence University. Originally conceived as a concerto for wind ensemble, the musical materials for the entire symphony are based on an artificial scale of C, Db, Eb, F, G, A, Bb, C. The symphony is one continuous structure consisting of 4 movements and 3 interludes, with each note of the scale serving as a tonal center for one of the sections. The form of each movement is consistently ABABA and the interludes all feature the percussion section with an individual soloist from the band.

The entire symphony is about transformation and emergence from darkness into light. The opening notes of the introduction begin in the lowest notes of the contrabassoon and ascend into a primal scream, leading into a threatening and angry first movement. The tone shifts with each successive movement up until the strong and triumphant finale. You can read Boysen's detailed program notes about his symphony from my Dropbox folder (you don't need to download any software to read the files I'm sharing though Dropbox).

The melodic motives established at the beginning are recognizable throughout all the movements and interludes, making this piece very accessible to the ears of the audience even with the abundance of harsh and dissonant sounds in particular movements. The entire symphony is tightly knit together by the melodic motives presented in the opening, which will help your rehearsal process as students learn to recognize them.

I'm really taken by this piece and I'm glad Andrew Boysen is making it available to purchase. I've excerpted some sections of each movement of the symphony that you can listen to from my Dropbox folder. If you want to hear the entire work, it's been recorded by Andrew Mast and the Lawrence University band, and I have copies of the CD in stock. This is a great way to showcase every section and member of your band. And yes - that is a harpsichord in the second movement. I'm not kidding when I say you'll get to use EVERY section of the band.

#BOYSYM6

Set - $350

Score - $100

Escanas de Los Aztecas

James Barnes

James Barnes was recently commissioned to compose a new work for Belgian publisher Louis Martinus (of HAFABRA Music). Louis asked him to write a work similar to his Pagan Dances that he wrote in 1980. Barnes decided to compose a work about the Aztec civilization.

Cast in a single movement with three distinct sections, the first portion, Jaguar Dance, employs an ocarina, log drums and other Aztec instruments to celebrate the animal the Aztecs most worshiped. The second portion, Cantares (or Ghost Dance) has a lengthy English Horn solo introduction. The Aztecs worshiped not only multiple gods, but their ancestors as well. Cantares were mystical chants used by the high priests to invoke the spirits of their ancestors

The final portion, Human Sacrifice, is a moderate but intense dance in 7/8 time, intended to invoke the horror of the brutal, massive Aztec religious sacrificial ceremonies. OK, so this piece may not fit well in the programs of some Christian colleges (I didn't choose the CD cover), but it is a powerful and solid piece of music that will draw in both performers and audience members.

Click the CD cover image above to view the score. You can also listen to a partial recording of the first few minutes from each section, or a live performance of the entire piece by the Swedish national wind band. You can also listen to this on the HAFABRA CD of the same name (pictured above), or on a James Barnes collection by the University of Texas at El Paso, both of which are available through me at M-R Music as I begin building our CD library. Contact me for details on these recordings.

#HAFESC1

Set - $300

Score - $75

Duende

Luis Alarcon

In flamenco music, the term Duende is used to refer to a state of inspiration and supreme perceptiveness, almost magic, which is only reached by the performer in rare occasions. In this four movement set of symphonic preludes, Luis Alarcon draws from numerous sources of Spanish Popular music for inspiration, including de Falla, Albinez, Tomatito, and other jazz and Latin influences.

It's highly energetic with a lot of percussion and flair. As a former Bass Clarinet major, I wish I could have had the chance to play the opening to the second movement, although it's really just a cue for the solo bass guitar. The rhythms are very catchy and it's a fun piece to listen to. You'll see in the video (below) the Flamenco Box Drum in heavy use. It's not often you get to sit on the percussion instrument you're playing.

You can listen to and watch a complete performance here, and you can peruse a pdf of the first page of each movement of the score by clicking the image above.

#PIL11184

Parts only - $295

Score - $95

*Don't forget - you can click the item images

to look at the score for that piece

Sinfonia Resurrectionis

Vaclav Nelhybel

This massive work was written for and premiered by Col. Arnold Gabriel and the US Air Force Band in 1981. Due to it's large scale, the work remained unpublished, although Fred Fennell revived it briefly in 1997 with a new recording by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Ensemble.

This year Sinfonia Resurrectionis was selected as the required test piece for the top level bands in the 2013 World Music Competition. An engraved edition was prepared by Louis Martinu and Hafabra Music for the contest and is now available for sale. It's over 20 minutes long and requires a second director to play musical cues from a CD.

You can watch and listen to an excellent performance of most of this work by the Wilhelmina Glanerbrug wind ensemble. You can also look at the entire score by clicking the image above. No commercial recording yet (the examples above are out of print), but I expect there will be at some time soon. I'm glad to see that this great undertaking by Nelhybel will not be lost to time.

#HAF553

Set - $475

Score - $95

Earthrise

Nigel Clarke

One thing that I look for in a good composition is the ability for the composer to paint a picture and keep my attention with just the music alone. I think Nigel Clarke did a good job of that with Earthrise. It's a challenging work that's engaging to the listener, and stands on its own merits without knowing the program notes behind it. I also see it as a nice complimentary work to many programs, in that it can be programmed around a pretty wide variety of other works in a concert.

I don't have a pdf score of this one for you to look at, but you can listen to and watch the premiere performance by the G�teborg Symphonic Band on youtube. You can also watch a video of Clarke giving a short interview about his piece before the premiere. You can also look at a pdf of the program notes for a more detailed background of this piece. I also have a Royal Northern College of Music CD with this piece recorded on it, contact me for more details.

#M050089322

Set - $295

Score - $75

Angels of the Apocalypse

David Gillingham

At seven and a half minutes, this one is a bit more technically accessible than some of the other works in this newsletter, though still a grade 6. As you'd expect, Gillingham infuses plenty of his standard flourishes into the winds, percussion, piano and harp to keep the fingers busy.

This is a programatic work based on the book of Revelation and the seven angels blowing on their seven trumpets to bring about the end times. It's very colorful, lyrical and powerful. You can listen to the complete performance, and look at the first few pages of the score by clicking the image above. You could close a program with this, or put it in the center of a concert and bookend it with contrasting works.

Also - if you want to challenge your percussionists even more, Gillingham also arranged this work for an 8 player percussion ensemble. Take a look at the score for the percussion edition here.

#20240

Set - $140

Score - $35

Dionysiaques

Florent Schmit

Many of you know about this edition already and have ordered or played it, but it bears repeating for the few of you who don't know.

After the success of publishing a new modern edition of Fauchet's Symphony for Wind Band (don't know about this one? Take a listen and then contact me for details), editor Felix Hauswirth took the time to typeset one of the masterworks of the wind band literature that up until now had only been available for rent in a barely legible hand-manuscript form. Now directors that have avoided programming this work due to the rehearsal difficulties in reading the parts and the logistics of working with rental departments have the opportunity to expose their students to this standard of the repertoire.

If you've never heard this piece, you can watch the Philharmonic Winds of Singapore perform it.

#SCHM05180

Set - $375

Score - $75

In the next few issues I'll talk about music between grades 2 and 5. There's plenty of new music in this range out there, and as always I think certain of them are worth a little extra promotion so that directors know about them.

The field is wide open though. What are some topics you'd like me to research and talk about? It can be anything related to any aspect of the band world at all. I love doing research, so don't be afraid to make any suggestions, simple or off the beaten path. I will try to accommodate as many suggestions as you give to me, so email me at instrumental@mrmusicinc.com with your ideas.

Meanwhile, to a colleague and spread the word around that the knowledge you came to expect from the former Shattinger Music store is still available here.