SCHOOL BAND EXPLORING MUSICIANSHIP THROUGH REPERTOIRE

THE BRITISH ARE COMING

MUSIC  - AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE &

THE CHALLENGES OF TIME

EXPLORING THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICIANSHIP IN YOUR BAND

THROUGH THE EMERGING BRITISH & EUROPEAN REPERTOIRE

 Article based on a repertoire clinic given at the 60^th Annual Mid-West Clinic, Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago, Tuesday 19^th December 2006

Demonstration Group: Winter Park High School Wind Ensemble

Winter Park, Florida  

CLINIC AVAILABLE ON CD FROM MARK CUSTOM RECORDS

6787-MCD

EXPLORING THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICIANSHIP IN YOUR BAND

THROUGH THE EMERGING BRITISH & EUROPEAN REPERTOIRE

For quarter of a century we in Britain have been commissioning band music at every level. This session will investigate the artistic development of the School Band through careful selection of British repertoire, and will introduce some little-known European catalogues.

THE MUSIC WE CHOOSE TODAY CAN AFFECT STUDENTS FOR EVER

We must learn to teach music - not band, not orchestra, not chorus, but music itself...Choosing music is the single most important thing a band director can do, and is the only thing a band director can do alone……

Frederick Fennell

MUSIC A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

I firmly believe that music will someday become a 'universal language'. But it will not become so as long as our musical vision is limited to the output of four European countries between 1700 and 1900. The first step in the right direction is to view the music of all peoples and periods without prejudice of any kind, and strive to put the world's known and available best music into circulation. Only then shall we be justified in calling music a 'universal language.

 Percy Grainger  

Symphony or chamber orchestras, opera companies, choirs and chamber groups draw on three centuries and five continents for their programmes. Musicians working in jazz, rock, folk or world music know no boundaries when planning what to play. We in the wind band world sometimes tend to be more chauvinistic, and to limit our programming to what we can easily purchase and easily play. Often we do not have time to look outside the box for new repertoire ideas. The big challenge for all of us is time; we owe it to our students to view time and its challenges in a different way.

THE CHALLENGES OF

T I M E

·        TECHNICAL   

·        INTELLECTUAL   

·        MUSICAL     

·        EMOTIONAL

MUSIC MUST BE EMOTIONAL FIRST, INTELLECTUAL SECOND

Although the clinic began on a technical level, I actually would prefer my acronym to be in reverse, EMIT, since for me the most important element in the arts, and especially in music, is emotion.  Sharing repertoire is one invaluable advantage of the world wide web, though lists usually show prejudices and go out of date very quickly. American colleagues still recommend a “core” repertoire list from a study dated 1992, A List of Compositions for Wind-Band which meet the Criteria for Serious Artistic Merit on the website http://www2.doane.edu/Dept_Pages/Gilbert/Evaluators.htm

There are ten criteria, but the most important to me in any art, emotion, is not listed here. It was Maurice Ravel who said Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.  

TECHNICAL CHALLENGES FROM ADAM GORB

Philip Sparke in a recent interview in the Instrumentalist said When guest conducting, I have noticed that band directors underestimate the ability level of the ensemble; a bit of pushing never goes amiss.

I would agree entirely with Philip; excellent players will drag along the less experienced, and as long as you follow with a work which is in everyone’s comfort zone, challenge the group’s technical expertise. However, technical challenges might also be challenges of unexpected phrase lengths, of unusual harmonies, of unlikely solo instruments – Adam Gorb is in my view a composer who writes light music with good tunes which never descends into cliché, which entertains without patronising, and which is at all levels of difficulty. Some time ago at a CBDNA Conference, a director of a High School band came up delighted to meet me, the commissioner of Adam Gorb’s Awayday. He had heard it played by the US Marines, had purchased it, tried it out and found it too difficult. A year later he tried it out, too difficult, the next year he was retiring so he had to play it, the kids loved it and it was a huge success. I asked him if he had tried any of Adam’s easier music. “Has he written any?” was the reply.

I began the clinic with a few bars of Awayday and then explored four excerpts from his Bridgewater Breeze.

INTELLECTUAL CHALLENGES FROM DEREK BOURGEOIS

Derek Bourgeois undoubtedly has one of the finest compositional techniques of any composer. He moves effortlessly through a wide variety of styles and teasing metrical changes, and like Gorb’s his music speaks directly to the player and audience. Undoubtedly his best-known work is the Serenade, a teasing piece in a mix of 11/8 and 13/8 written as a wedding march. I introduced the rest of his music and the HaFaBra catalogue with an excerpt from Metro Gnome, an equally charming tune in 7/8 which alternates 3+2+2 with 2+2+3. The HaFaBra catalogue has a wide library of musical excerpts from his music and is well worth  exploring.

MUSICAL CHALLENGES FROM GUY WOOLFENDEN

& FERGAL CARROLL

Music – the art of expression in sound

                                                                               Chamber’s Dictionary

Andrew Mather, conductor of the Melbourne Youth Symphonic Band, Australia , sums up what we need to be able to teach in through band music:

Ensemble precision

Musical phrasing

Wide range of dynamic control

Increase in individual member technique and tone production

High level awareness of intonation

Awareness of instrumental balance and subtlety within sections & the band

The ability to follow sophisticated conducting gestures

Performing a variety of band repertoire

Leadership experience for sectional leaders 

Accompanying experience

To exploit these musical teaching tools, to conduct musically, we need to choose “musical” music. We cannot choose Mozart of Haydn, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky or Elgar, but we can seek out works which lend themselves to musical interpretation, which has sentiment without being sentimental. For me, the first composer BASBWE commissioned back in the early eighties, Guy Woolfenden, writes wind music which captures so many of the elements I look for in teaching and performing. In the clinic we played an excerpt from Gallimaufry, his first work for wind band.

I find these musical elements in so much British music, in composers represented in my Chicago clinic, in the music of Martin Ellerby and Stephen McNeff, and in the music by a newcomer to the Maecenas catalogue, Fergal Carroll. We played his Song of Lir which together with Blackwater and Winter Dances I would certainly recommend for a school band at about Grade 3.

THE CHALLENGE OF FINDING MUSIC FOR THE LESS EXPERIENCED BAND

While it is relatively easy to find “good” music for groups which enjoy more challenging repertoire, discovering similar repertoire for the less experienced school band at Grade 1-2-3 level is extremely difficult. In 2006 Maecenas Music launched a new series aimed at this level.

Genesis series

New wind music for beginner bands and ensembles, Genesis provides original music by quality composers in a variety of styles for beginner bands, which even the least experienced or technically accomplished can perform. Nothing is above grade 3; much is considerably easier and scored so that novices can make a valuable contribution. No arrangements, no transcriptions, no excerpts, only complete original compositions with genuine musical content are written specially for the series.

The emphasis is on practicality and flexibility. Extensive cross cueing, musically sensitive doubling of instrumental lines and generous quantities of parts in sets will allow players in almost any combination, numbers and ability range to share a real musical experience, both in rehearsal and in concert.

We played excerpts from four works in the series:

          The Piper of Brafferton                               Fergal Carroll                                  
          Dance of the Fir Darrig                               Fergal Carroll                         

          Nancy 's Lament                                          Malcolm Binney                      

          Shaftoe's Hoe-Down                                  Malcolm Binney                      
 

Warren Benson always used to counsel against making lists. In the early days of WASBE we wasted a lot of time seeking out a “Core” repertoire.  One of my favortie works which I would include in any Christmas Concert, and in fact have conducted on Christmas Day in Jerusalem , is Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson, but I have never seen it in any listing of core repertoire. (I wonder what his Piano Concerto is like). Below is a list of Not Core Repertoire but is of music which I am happy to programme in any situation and which, I think, speaks to the players and the audience. Other works which I enjoy listening to, programming and conducting, can be discovered on www.timreynish.com in the homepages, in the articles or in the repertoire for Canford. Most of these works would be American Grade 4-5

EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES

What are human emotions? Not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy, but laughter.

 Dmitri Shostakovich

Finding music which plumbs the depths of tragedy is relatively easy, but so much of our repertoire is just bright and breezy, often good fun without being funny. I remember a Mid-West clinic where I discovered a genuinely funny piece for school band by David Maslanka, Rollo Takes a Walk.  Adam Gorb writes fun and funny music, Yiddish Dances is a great example of this as is his Bermuda Triangle. Another composer who is often funny in his music is Derek Bourgeois.

The March which is the basis for Marcel Wengler’s Versuche uber einem Marsch is hilarious with its misplaced strong beats and false entries, hard to con duct even though it is in 2/4 apart from one bar of 3. At the clinic we did not have time to introduce another Luxembourg composer, Marco Pütz. Many of his works carry serious political statements, Meltdown  on the subject of disaster at a nuclear powerstation,  Praemonitio  about ecology, but he has a wry quirky sense of humour, and his WASBE Schools commission Dance Sequence has a rare emotional variety.

WITH SENTIMENT BUT NOT SENTIMENTAL

All too often I hear a new piece of music which grabs the attention by its energy, freshness and vitality, and then when it reaches a second more lyrical section it descends into cliché. I was once challenged by Martin Ellerby to define a cliché which of course I failed to do. However, an harmonic or melodic sequence which sounds completely natural in a Schubert song or a Rakhmaninov Symphony grates for me in a contemporary wind band piece, because it is not of its time. The problem is to find music which carries sentiment without being sentimental. Again, I find that Adam Gorb can write wonderfully heartfelt slow music which is intense but never cloying. Another British composer who achieves this in this music is Bill Connor. Like Alec Wilder, Bill is completely lacking in any ego, hardly any of his music is published, and it all needs exploration and publishing. His Tails aus dem Vood Viennoise (from which we played two excerpts)  represents for me the closest we can take Grade 3 players to the experience of a Mahler Symphony. Your players will be baffled for the first rehearsals, but I remember being completely bemused when in the City of Bimringham we first tackled Mahler 5 with Antal Dorati. 

Finally we ended with a performance of the slow movement of the Richard Rodney Bennett Trumpet Concerto, a serial piece, which contradicts those prophets of doom who reckon that there is no future in writing twelve-note music.

 MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS CLINIC IS AVAILABLE 

 In USA SHATTINGER http://www.shattingermusic.com/

In UK JUST MUSIC http://www.justmusicuk.com/

And from your local retailers

COMPOSERS FEATURED IN THIS CLINIC

Adam Gorb                              http://www.adamgorb.co.uk/

Guy Woolfenden                    http://www.arielmusic.co.uk/

Derek Bourgeois                   http://www.tramuntana.infoarta.com/

Fergal Carroll                        http://www.cmc.ie/composers/composer.cfm?composerID=158

Malcolm Binney                     http://www.maecenasmusic.co.uk/CONTENTS.HTM

Marcel Wengler                    http://www.ipcl.lu/eng/quartet2005/repertoire/wengler.php

Marco Pütz                             http://www.marcopuetz.lu/

Bill Connor                 http://www.cc-cw.org/bill_connor_english.htm

Richard Rodney Bennett  http://www.chesternovello.com/Default.aspx?tabId=2431

PUBLISHERS FEATURED IN THIS CLINIC

Maecenas/Masters Music  http://www.masters-music.com/

G&M Brand US agents C Alan Mailing Address: P.O. Box 29323 , Greensboro , NC 27429-9323    tel: 336-272-3920   Email: contact@c-alanpublications.com

http://www.c-alanpublications.com/

Faber   US sales agent is Alfred Publishing Co Inc in Van Nuys , CA

tel +1 800 292 6122 http://www.alfred.com/frameset.cfm?sub=home

  US exclusive hire agent is Boosey & Hawkes Inc in New York .

HaFaBra              http://www.hafabramusic.com/    HaFaBra publications are available through Shattinger

Novello/Music Sales Studio Music Company Wind Band Publications are exclusively available in the United States from Southern Music Company http://www.southernmusic.com/

Vanderbeek & Imrie Ltd: 15 Marvig, Lochs, Isle of Lewis HS2 9QP

Bronsheim                      http://www.bronsheim.nl/

De Haske                       http://www.dehaske.com/

Opus 33 Music              http://www.opus33.com/frameset1.html

Piles                               http://www.pilesmusic.org/

TIM REYNISH INTERNATIONAL REPERTOIRE RECORDINGS

AVAILABLE FROM MARK CUSTOM RECORDING SERVICE

& SHATTINGER

 NEW

VOL. 4 ITHACA COLLEGE WIND ENSEMBLE                                        6804-MCD

Improvisations-Rhythms (1975)                                Andreas Makris                                      Greece/USA

Reflections (2000)                                                        Richard Rodney Bennett                    England/USA

L’Homme Armé (2003)                                                 Christopher Marshall                                                               New Zealand

Resonance (2006)                                                         Christopher Marshall                                                               New Zealand

Dances from Crete (2003)                                            Adam Gorb                                                     England

Marsch (1981)                                                               Marcel Wengler                                     Luxembourg

NEW

VOL. 3 ITHACA COLLEGE SYMPHONIC BAND                                    6733-MCD

King Pomade Suite no 2 (1953)                                  Ranki Gyorgy                                                Hungary

Elegy for Miles Davis (1993)                                      Richard Rodney Bennett                    England/USA

Symphony of Winds (1981)                                        Derek Bourgeois                                            Majorca

Blackwater (2006)                                                         Fergal Carroll                                                    Ireland

Tails aus dem Voods Viennoise (1992)                     Bill Connor                                                         Wales

VOL. 2 UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY WIND ENSEMBLE                     5347-MCD

Dances from Crete (2003)                                            Adam Gorb                                                     England

Gran Duo (2000)                                                           Magnus Lindberg                                           Finland

Awake, You Sleepers (2002)                                       Laurence Bitensky                                               USA

Per la Flor del Lliri Blau (1934)                                    Joaquin Rodrigo                                                 Spain

VOL. 1 UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY WIND ENSEMBLE                     4949-MCD

 Samurai (1995)                                                           Nigel Clarke                                                       England

Diaghilev Dances (2003)                                           Kenneth Hesketh                                             England

Danse Funambulesque (1930)                                 Jules Strens                                                       Belgium

L’Homme Armé (2003)                                              Christopher Marshall                            New Zealand

Concerto for Wind Orchestra (2003)                         Christian Lindberg                                         Sweden

AVAILABLE FROM SHATTINGER

THE ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC WIND ORCHESTRA

Conducted by Tim Reynish

CHANDOS    CHAN 9549                  Percy Grainger Works for Wind Orchestra volume 1

                        CHAN 9630                  Percy Grainger works for Wind Orchestra volume 2

                        CHAN 9697                  British Wind Band Classics, Holst & Vaughan Williams

                        CHAN 9805                  German Classics, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Toch & Blacher

                        CHAN 9897                  French Classics, Berlioz, Schmitt, Milhaud Bozza & Saint-Saens

DOYEN          DOYCD 037                 Morning Music – Midnight Music: Richard R Bennett & Bazelon

                        DOYCD 043                 Wind Music by Edward Gregson

                        DOYCD 127                 W