Results
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£64.95The Storm Cone (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
The Storm Cone was commissioned from Lucy Pankhurst as a central part of an immersive artwork by Laura Daly, which considers our intrinsic relationship with the past. The project itself takes the form of a downloadable app, featuring geolocated augmented reality technology and binaural recordings. The music was performed and recorded remotely by the students, staff and friends of the University of Salford during the UK lockdowns in 2021.At its centre, is a journey through music and sound that charts the fading away of a brass band during the interwar years (1918 - 1939). Using new technologies to trace lost bandstands in their final days of mass popularity, we first encounter the band performing as a full ensemble, in 360audio. Breath-taking detail can be heard from every instrument as you move amongst the absent musicians; proximity alters the perception of sounds as Pankhurst's score builds and then returns to a single note. From the powerful, collective sound of the band, the journey then follows the departed musicians into eight spatial sound works by Daly, where their fragile solo phrases merge and mutate in new environments. History, fiction, artifice, and reality combine within this sensory encounter to confront the present with its past.This absorbing work takes its name from the title of Rudyard Kipling's 1932 poem that forewarned of WWII. It considers key aspects of the interwar period and the ensuing break-up and reshaping of communities in different parts of the country. Brass bands, with their strong industrial, religious and militaristic associations, lost many musicians to both World Wars, and the intervening years of shellshock, unemployment, economic migrancy, and industrial action. Their survival and the survival of brass music tell a story of working-class life during this epoch of deindustrialisation. Life, music and creative legacy are all being sustained by breath. As the band's sound lingers in an absent-minded hum or whistle, it becomes both an imprint and portal to these past times.The Storm Cone commemorates the legacy of creativity, music and sound, the power of community and the importance of collective memory, history and storytelling. It highlights the emotive nature of the past and how it can also help foresee possible futures. Serving as a warning shot, The Storm Cone contemplates the residual impact of the interwar period and the cyclical nature of history in terms of current events, including the economic downturn and the rise of populism, extremism, racism and antisemitism; problems seemingly exacerbated by the current pandemic. The resulting experience is an artwork that underlines human strength and fragility and is imbued with a sense of both loss and celebration.Duration: 10.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£125.00The World Rejoicing (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
The World Rejoicing was commissioned by the National Brass Band Associations of Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and the British Open, as the test piece for their competitions in 2020/21. Although the work was completed in 2019, the pandemic of 2020 meant that these competitions were postponed until 2021/22. The premiere took place in September 2021 at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK.In searching for a common link between the brass band traditions of the various European countries that commissioned this work, I considered the fact that hymns have always played an important role in the relationship that brass bands have with their particular communities; and thus I turned to a well- known Lutheran chorale, Nun danket alle Gott (Now thank we all our God), written around 1636 by Martin Rinkart, with the melody attributed to Johann Cruger. A number of composers have incorporated this chorale into their music, most famously J.S. Bach in his Cantatas no. 79 and 192, and Mendelssohn in the Lobsegang movement of his 2nd Symphony (the harmonisation of which is usually used when this hymn is sung).It seemed fitting therefore for me to return to a compositional form I have used many times before (Variations) and to write a work based on this hymn. I have used it in a similar way to that which I employed in my Variations on Laudate Dominum of 1976 - that is, rather than writing a set of variations using elaborations of the complete tune, I have taken various phrases from the chorale and used them within the context of other musical material, applying an overall symphonic process of continuous variation and development. The structure, or sub-divisions of the work, which is through composed and plays without a break, is as follows:Prelude, Capriccio, La Danza 1, Processional, La Danza 2, Arias and Duets, Fuga Burlesca, Chorale, and Postlude.The work, which is around 16 minutes in length, is also partly autobiographical - in the manner say of Strauss's Ein Heldenleben - in that I have incorporated into the score brief quotations from many of my other major works for brass band. In that respect, The World Rejoicing sums up a particular facet of my life as a composer, and reflects the admiration I have always had for what is surely one of the great amateur music-making traditions in the world.Duration: 16.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£90.00Vienna Nights (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
The City of Vienna stands at one of the historic crossroads of the world, linking east and west and embracing artistic influences from all sides. In the 250th anniversary year of Mozart's birth, this fantasy on Mozart's celebrated Piano Sonata in A (K331), has been composed true to the form and content of the original, but also to the underlying substance of the conception.One of Mozart's distinguishing features, and one that links him to later music by Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler and Schoenberg, is the breadth of his musical vision. His music links intellectual rigour with ecstatic utterance and darker preoccupations. It is, perhaps, this shadow-laden side of his musical nature which gives his work a profundity often absent in the work of his contemporaries. Admirers of his Requiem Mass or the Statue music in Don Giovanni will recognise that it is this extra sense of reality which makes Mozart so relevant to the modern age, and where he may link hands with the other great Viennese thinkers such as Berg, Webern and Adorno.The composer follows the three movement plan of the Sonata closely. The original begins with a Theme and Variations which is freely quoted. His Minuet is mirrored in the Recitative and Notturno, where each section of the band lays down a metaphoric rose to his memory. Famously, the sonata ends in populistic style with a Turkish Rondo. Ever since the Hapsburg-Ottoman Wars, which came to an end in the seventeenth century, Viennese composers have included Turkish elements in their music, not least in the use of certain percussion instruments. Vienna Nights is thusly a homage.It celebrates the world's greatest composer, but also the city which fostered his work. Here, in your imagination, you might easily conjure up a caf table near the Opera House, where Mozart, Mahler and Sigmund Freud, observed by us all from a discreet distance, may meet as old friends.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£127.95Music of the Angels (Symphonic Brass Ensemble - Score and Parts)
In 1998 Gregson was commissioned by conductor Martyn Brabbins to write a short concert opener with choir to mark his debut as Music Director of the Huddersfield Choral Society. Entitled ...and the seven trumpets... this ten minute flourish is founded on a verse from Chapter 8 of the Revelation To John (The Apocalypse), the last book in the Bible: 'and I saw the seven Angels which stood before God: and to them were given seven trumpets'. The performance employed the full power of the Huddersfield Town Hall organ and the brass section of the BBC Philharmonic, including seven trumpets and four horns placed strategically around hall.The following year, when Gregson received a commission from the Cheshire-based Foden's Brass Band (conducted at that time by Nicholas Childs) for a work to mark its centenary in 2000, he turned to the first portion of ...and the seven trumpets... as the basis for an ambitious celebratory work entitled The Trumpets of the Angels. "The opportunity to create an extended work which would break out of the brass band mould was an important milestone for me," the composer says. In 2015 he was asked by Nicholas Childs to create a new performing edition without organ for the Black Dyke Band. This received its first performance in April 2016 at the European Brass Band Festival in Lille. In 2018, Gregson revisited the music for a third time, returning the opening fanfares to orchestral brass and transforming substantial portions of the 'Black Dyke' version to create Music of the Angels, a dramatic canvas for symphonic brass and percussion.An array of bells and gongs offer an unmistakable key to the source of Gregson's inspiration. Inscribed In tribute to Olivier Messiaen, the work's principal material and its sound world, but crucially not the underlying musical processes, are influenced by Messiaen's masterpiece for wind and percussion, Et exspecto ressurectionem mortuorum (1964). Music of the Angels begins with braying of horns suggestive of the start of an ancient ritual. Six 'angel' trumpeters, set behind the ensemble, answer in sequence, with the evocative sound of tam-tams creating the Messiaen-like aura. Once the horns have reached the performing space, four of the trumpeters deliver highly contrasting fanfare cadenzas. At the climax of this episode, the individual fanfares are presented together, as if, perhaps, to reflect the Biblical writer's apocalyptic visions of hail, fire, seas of blood and the cataclysmic destruction of man and beast.This powerful vision of death and destruction gives way to a prayerful lament, re-imagining a sung Kyrie Eleison from the 'Black Dyke' edition, with flugel horn and euphonium obligati. The hushed atmosphere is broken by tenor and side drums, and trumpets five and six, which gallop away like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the biblical account their steeds had 'heads like lions with fire and smoke and sulphur issuing from their mouths'.As the reverberation of a dramatic climax dies we hear the entry of the seventh trumpet, from 'on high', blazing forth with a version of the main that extends across the entire compass of the instrument - almost three octaves. Supported by a 'holy trinity' of gongs, an 'epic' final cadenza introduces new material which is further developed in a frenetic final section. This is announced by two sets of timpani, to the left and right. Braying brass (euphoniums and horns) once more adds an air of foreboding. As the music builds towards a magisterial conclusion, the Messiaen-inspired tritones of the principal motif are smoothed out into perfect 5ths and combined with the earlier material in a full-voiced chorale, over which the seventh trumpet blazes in triumph.- Programme note by Paul HindmarshScored for1 Trumpet in E flat (Trumpet 5)6 Trumpets in B flat (Trumpet 4 doubling Flugel Horn)4 Horns in F3 Tenor Trombones1 Bass TromboneEuphonium2 Tubas2 Timpani (Percussion 3 doubles Timpani 2)Percussion (3 players): 3 Tam-tams, 3 Suspended Cymbals, Bass Drum, Tenor Drum, Snare Drum, Tubular Bells.Duration: 16.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£50.00Greetings to a City (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
Sir Arthur Bliss (1891 - 1975) was a significant composer and pillar of the British musical establishment. Although Born in London, his father was from the United States and both countries were important in his life and career. A pupil of Stanford at the Royal College of Music, Bliss travelled to the United States with his father in 1923, taking a prominent part in Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's Pittsfield Music Festival, as well as undertaking some teaching and conducting. In 1925 he married Trudy Hoffman and they returned to the UK early in 1926. Bliss's most influential scores were his ballets and film scores. In 1953 Sir Arthur was appointed Master of the Queen's Music, after which he added a steady stream of fanfares and ceremonial works to his list of works. In 1960 he was commissioned by the American Wind Symphony of Pittsburgh, which requested for festive work to feature on an extensive European tour, including a performance in London.Bliss scored Greetings to a City for antiphonal brass, a choir each of 2 trumpets, 2 horns and three trombones, with tuba and percussion. This adaptation for brass band instruments retains an element of antiphony, emphasing the contrast between the fanfare instruments (cornets and trombones) and the horns and tubas. Greetings to a City is cast in three connected sections, with extended fanfare episodes separated by a short lyrical interlude.- Paul HindmarshDuration: 6.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£45.00Lament (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
The English composer Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941) did not take an active part in the First World War. However, he was devastated by the slaughter on the western and the eastern fronts, especially the loss of so many of his musicians friends and colleagues. Writing in 1963, his former pupil Benjamin Britten confessed that 'a lot of my feelings about the First World War which people seemed to see in the War Requiem came from Bridge. He had written a piano sonata in memory of a friend killed in France and though he didn't encourage me to take a stand for the sake of a stand, he did make me argue and argue and argue. His own pacifism was not aggressive, but typically gentle'.Bridge composed this Lament for string orchestra on 14 June 1915, in memory of Catherine Crompton, who drowned when the Cunard liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine on 7 May, 1915. According to figures researched by Liverpool historian Kevin Roach (www.lusitania.net), 1201 men, women and children lost their lives out of the 1962 people aboard. Ninety-four children died, including Catherine, her twin brother Paul and four other siblings. Paul Crompton, Snr. (44), a British businessman working in Philadelphia, his wife Gladys (40) and the family nanny were also drowned. How Bridge's dedication came about is uncertain. The music critic Edwin Evans, who knew Bridge well, has written that the Catherine was a young friend. It is also possible that he came across the family photograph which was published in many newspapers in the wake of the tragedy. By that time, Bridge was greatly distressed by the war as a whole. It seems perfectly in keeping with his pacifist leanings and the strength of his reaction, that this poignant and deeply touching 'war memorial' should mourn a child who he did not know, rather than one of the thousands of young men who fell in battle.Through the musical tears of this melancholy lullaby, Bridge may have regarded the death of young Catherine Crompton as symbolic of the loss of so many innocent lives in wartime. His response to this personal tragedy was characteristically spontaneous and utterly sincere. It is one of his most effective miniatures, poignant yet restrained in its lyrical beauty, with a compelling directness and simplicity of construction.This brass band transcription is pitched one tone lower than the original for string orchestra.- Paul HindmarshDuration: 5.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£95.00A Wartime Sketchbook (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
Early in 1941 William Walton, 39, received his call-up papers. He was by then one of the most eminent of British composers and was exempted from military service on condition that he provided music for films deemed to be of 'national importance'. Scoring Lawrence Olivier's Shakespeare epic Henry V in 1943 was the most substantial of these wartime projects. His role in patriotic films from 1941 and 42 like The Foreman went to France, Next of Kin, Went the day Well and The First of the Few was to provide appropriate title music and some underscoring at key moments. Walton extracted the most substantial portions of the latter as the popular Spitfire Prelude and Fugue for orchestra. The remaining music remained unpublished until 1990, when Christopher Palmer assembled the highlights into A Wartime Sketchbook. I was intrigued to hear these examples of Walton's wartime music and having discovered that they would fit naturally and idiomatically onto the brass band, I arranged six of the numbers into a suite for Besses o' th' Barn Band, which I was conducting at the time.In 1995 the brass band suite was recorded by the famous Black Dyke Mills Band as part of an all Walton album which I produced for the ASV label (ASV CD WHL 2093). This award- winning CD also included Walton's First Shoot, in the edition by Elgar Howarth, my transcription of movements from Music for Children and two substantial brass versions by Edward Watson of the suite from Henry V (with narrator) and the March and Siegfried Music from The Battle of Britain music.Prologue: This is the stirring title music from Went the day Well, a screen play by Graham Greene about a German airborne invasion of an English village. The main theme leads toBicycle Chase: Characteristic musical high-jinks for J.B.Priestley's The Foreman went to France.Refugees: From the same film, this is a poignant accompaniment to the long march of refugees. As Ernest Irving, the film's musical director, put it, "this really makes your feet sore and your knees sag."Young Siegfrieds: This lively movement comes from the music that Walton composed for The Battle of Britain in 1968, with the assistance of Malcolm Arnold, but which the film's producer rejected. It portrays first the Berliners, cheerfully ignoring the black-out and then, in the trio, the Young Siegfrieds of the Luftwaffe, courtesy of a parody of Siegfried's horn call from Wagner's opera.Romance: A soldier and a Dutch refugee snatch a few tender moments together in Next of Kin.Epilogue: At the end of The Foreman went to France, the French look forward with hope and optimism to eventual liberation.- Paul HindmarshDuration: 14.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£89.95Orion (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
Orion was named after the giant huntsman in Greek mythology and is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world. It is one of the most conspicuous and recognisable constellations in the night sky. This piece and its inspiration were composed as a tone poem creating a musical picture of this amazing phenomenon.The opening introduces the constellation. Starting mysteriously with the percussion and basses this section develops a series of rhythmic and harmonic interludes from the upper brass. As this introduction develops, the melodic line lead by the Solo Cornet and Euphonium builds as the accompanying instruments increase in their rhythmic complexity. This section climaxes with a short fanfare motif which will be a prominent theme throughout this piece.The fast rhythmic section that follows serves as a technical test for the players. The thematic device introduced by the Solo Cornets is passed around various soloists and sections within the ensemble. This part of the tone poem gives the opportunity for the ensemble to highlight their technical prowess. The fanfare motif returns to conclude this section and takes the piece into the slow middle movement.Motifs heard earlier are mixed with new ideas in this slow section which give an opportunity for a variety of soloists to demonstrate their musical prowess. After the various solo passages and cadenzas, the mood shifts dramatically to a more ominous section that builds in texture and dynamic. Concluding with our returning fanfare motif the piece then builds in momentum towards our finale section.This finale is a technical showcase which will further test the playing ability and stamina of soloists, small groups and the full ensemble. Using prominent musical themes heard throughout this piece the music builds to a glorious conclusion fitting with wonderful constellation.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£110.00Diversions After Benjamin Britten (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
Suite by Lucy Pankhurst, Simon Dobson, Paul McGhee and Gavin HigginsHaving devised a collective centenary tribute for Michael Tippett at the 2006 RNCM Festival of Brass (Variations on a Theme of Michael Tippett by five eminent composers of brass band music, PHM002), I commissioned this companion piece as a Benjamin Britten tribute for the 2013 festival. In the late 1970s, while researching a book about the English composer, and Britten's first teacher, Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941), I came across a copy of the printed score of Benjamin Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (Op.10) for string orchestra, in which Britten had written descriptive titles for each of the variations suggesting appropriate character traits of his much loved mentor and guide. The character variations are cast in march, song and dance forms.Taking inspiration from Britten's youthful tribute, I invited four award-winning composers, who have all made significant contributions to the brass band medium, to create their own personal reflections on four aspects of Britten's character and music, designed to form a suite of Diversions after Benjamin Britten, but which can also be played separately.Lucy Pankhurst's hauntingly lyrical Prelude: His Depth refers to the emotional and symbolic subtexts that underpin Britten's operas, taking its musical cue from Britten's many arrangements of folk songs. The flugel horn takes a prominent role throughout.Simon Dobson's breathless Scherzo: His Vitality reminds us with its rapid passage work and leaping bass 'groove' that Britten loved tennis and fast cars in his younger days.Paul McGhee's evocative interpretation of the March: His Sympathy represents Benjamin Britten's pacifism, as the composer writes: 'We view the music through the eyes of a pacifist. Whilst war and violence surround us, we do not engage in it and though it continues to happen around us. With the use of muted effects in most of the band throughout the piece, the flugel horn is the lone voice of reason, standing firm against the mechanical and destructive society in which it is forced to live. As the machine of war continues around the lone voice, the voice is gradually dismissed and mocked as the war machine rumbles on into the distance.'In an extended finale, entitled Toccata: His Skill, Gavin Higgins celebrates Benjamin Britten's consummate creativity. For the RNCM Festival of Brass premiere, the four contrasting movements were framed and connected by Britten's Fanfare for St. Edmundsbury for three trumpets, with the trumpet soloists spaced round the hall. I am grateful to the Britten Estate and publishers Boosey & Hawkes for giving permission for the elements of Britten's fanfare to be incorporated in the collective work.- Paul HindmarshDuration: 19.30
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£39.95When Thunder Calls (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
When Thunder Calls was commissioned by Dr Nicholas Childs and the Black Dyke Band for their performance at the Gala Concert of the Swiss Open Championships in September 2011. When composing this piece, I decided to focus on both the music and the stage presentation. The way the piece has been composed and designed makes it a very effective way of starting a concert or a second half of a concert.At the start of the piece, the percussion enter the stage and take their positions in their usual place behind the band. They begin playing the piece without a conductor. They keep repeating the opening section while the Basses, Horns, Baritones and Euphoniums march onto the stage.This group of musicians take their seats with the Horns, Baritones and Euphoniums sitting where they usually sit in the band but the Basses sit where the solo cornets usually sit, forming an inner semi-circle of lower brass. When seated and when the music gets to the end of bar 4 the piece continues onto section A. All performers keep repeating this next 4-bar phrase until the trombones march onto stage and stand at the front of the stage with the Bass Trombone standing in between the other two trombones.All performers then play from figure B to C with the trombones taking the lead at the front. When the performers get to rehearsal figure C they repeat this section (the same as section A) while the trombones move from the front of the stage and take their positions where the Basses would normally sit (between the horns and the percussion) and remain standing. Meanwhile, the flugel enters the stage and stands at the front of the stage (standing where the trombones did). When in position the flugel soloist picks up into rehearsal figure D.When the flugel soloist finishes playing, just before rehearsal figure F they then move to their normal seat in the band. At figure F the cornets march onto the stage from either side, they turn and stand side by side each other facing outward towards the audience forming two 'fanfare' lines either side of the lower brass. The conductor follows the cornets on stage and on cue they lift their instruments at the same time and perform when the piece gets to figure G.There is no more moving around from this point on other than the solo cornet to move forward with the solo euphonium and perform their duet at letter H. Also the horns are required to stand and play at letter I and then sit just before J.When performed with all the choreography, this piece makes for an exciting addition to any concert repertoire both for the performer and the audience.Suitable for 3rd Section Bands and Above
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days