Results
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£40.00The World Rejoicing (Brass Band - Score only)
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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£15.00The World Rejoicing (Brass Band - Study Score)
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 Crger. 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 harmonization 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 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.The World Rejoicing is dedicated 'in loving memory of my brother', Bramwell Logan Gregson, who sadly passed away in the Autumn of 2018.Edward Gregson
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£29.99Titan's Progress (Brass Band - Score Only)
Commissioned by Austria's leading brass band, Brass Band Oberoesterreich, Titan's Progress is a series of descriptive, virtuoso episodes based on the principal character of the novel by Jean Paul. This was also the original subject of Mahler's Symphony No.1, from which Hermann Pallhuber derives much of his material. The work has proved an exceptionally popular test piece all over the world.Titan's Progress was the selected test piece for the British Open Brass Band Championship, held at Symphony Hall, Birmingham on Saturday 12th September 2009.Suitable for Championship BandsDuration: 17 minutes
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£120.00
Titan's Progress (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
Commissioned by Austria's leading brass band, Brass Band Oberoesterreich, Titan's Progress is a series of descriptive, virtuoso episodes based on the principal character of the novel by Jean Paul. This was also the original subject of Mahler's Symphony No.1, from which Hermann Pallhuber derives much of his material. The work has proved an exceptionally popular test piece all over the world.Titan's Progress was the selected test piece for the British Open Brass Band Championship, held at Symphony Hall, Birmingham on Saturday 12th September 2009.Suitable for Championship BandsDuration: 17 minutes
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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£40.00
A Wartime Sketchbook (Brass Band - Score only)
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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£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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£45.00
Diversions After Benjamin Britten (Brass Band - Score only)
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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£95.00Variations on a Theme of Michael Tippett (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
A Centenary Tribute by Michael Ball, Edward Gregson, Elgar Howarth, Bramwell Tovey and Philip WilbyThis unique 'pice d'occasion' arose out of a telephone conversation in 2004 with Alan Wycherley, who was the soprano cornet player of the Foden's Richardson Band at the time. He indicated that the band would like to include an original birthday tribute for Edward Gregson (60) and Elgar Howarth (70) in its concert at the 2005 RNCM Festival of Brass in Manchester. I have been Artistic Director of Manchester's Festival of Brass since it was established in 1990 as a BBC Radio 3 series, As the centenary of the birth of Sir Michael Tippett fell on 5 January 2005, I devised this collective work as a way of embracing all three anniversaries in a novel way.The idea of joint compositions is not a new one in the classical music world. In the 1860s, Verdi was joined by a number of his contemporaries in a Requiem Mass for Rossini. In this country there have been a number of orchestral examples over the past fifty years, but never before for the brass band. Although Tippett composed only one work for brass band, Festal Brass with Blues, his orchestral works and operas are full of idiomatic brass writing. The theme I chose for this celebration is one of Tippet's most memorable miniatures featuring wind and brass. In the opera Midsummer Marriage it marks the entry of the Ancients. It is also included in the orchestral Suite in D (1948), for the Birthday of Prince Charles.I invited five of the leading contemporary voices in brass band music to add their own creative perspectives to the little Tippett theme, with it's characteristic rhythms, embellishments and modality - the Lydian mode. Each contribution was designed to fit into a tonal and formal template to give the whole work a flow and continuity. In Danse des Amis, Bramwell Tovey has composed a jazzy, humorous variation. Inspiration came from Tippett's love of jazz and, more personally, from the characteristically syncopated gait of the distinguished music critic John Amis, who Tovey once observed leaving a performance of Tippett's opera King Priam before the end. Incidentally, that performance was conducted by Elgar Howarth.We hear Edward Gregson in lyrical mode. His Midsummer Song is redolent of the sound world of Tippett's opera A Midsummer Marriage and it ends with a brief reference to a favourite of Gregson's, Tippett's Concerto for Orchestra. Michael Ball provides a brief moment of light, airy activity bringing to mind perhaps Tippett's love of Shakespearian fantasy, especially The Tempest. Elgar Howarth juxtaposes a slowed down version of the processional theme with distant recollections of fanfares from King Priam. Philip Wilby has rounded the tribute off with a spectacular fugue. During its inexorable progress Wilby ingeniously introduces the two other birthday references - the three-note musical signature that Elgar Howarth includes in much of his music and the characteristic theme which begins Edward Gregson's substantial work for brass an organ The Trumpets of the Angels. An elaborated reprise of Tippett's little theme is followed by a dynamic coda.- Paul HindmarshDuration: 13.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£40.00
Variations on a Theme of Michael Tippett (Brass Band - Score only)
A Centenary Tribute by Michael Ball, Edward Gregson, Elgar Howarth, Bramwell Tovey and Philip WilbyThis unique 'pice d'occasion' arose out of a telephone conversation in 2004 with Alan Wycherley, who was the soprano cornet player of the Foden's Richardson Band at the time. He indicated that the band would like to include an original birthday tribute for Edward Gregson (60) and Elgar Howarth (70) in its concert at the 2005 RNCM Festival of Brass in Manchester. I have been Artistic Director of Manchester's Festival of Brass since it was established in 1990 as a BBC Radio 3 series, As the centenary of the birth of Sir Michael Tippett fell on 5 January 2005, I devised this collective work as a way of embracing all three anniversaries in a novel way.The idea of joint compositions is not a new one in the classical music world. In the 1860s, Verdi was joined by a number of his contemporaries in a Requiem Mass for Rossini. In this country there have been a number of orchestral examples over the past fifty years, but never before for the brass band. Although Tippett composed only one work for brass band, Festal Brass with Blues, his orchestral works and operas are full of idiomatic brass writing. The theme I chose for this celebration is one of Tippet's most memorable miniatures featuring wind and brass. In the opera Midsummer Marriage it marks the entry of the Ancients. It is also included in the orchestral Suite in D (1948), for the Birthday of Prince Charles.I invited five of the leading contemporary voices in brass band music to add their own creative perspectives to the little Tippett theme, with it's characteristic rhythms, embellishments and modality - the Lydian mode. Each contribution was designed to fit into a tonal and formal template to give the whole work a flow and continuity. In Danse des Amis, Bramwell Tovey has composed a jazzy, humorous variation. Inspiration came from Tippett's love of jazz and, more personally, from the characteristically syncopated gait of the distinguished music critic John Amis, who Tovey once observed leaving a performance of Tippett's opera King Priam before the end. Incidentally, that performance was conducted by Elgar Howarth.We hear Edward Gregson in lyrical mode. His Midsummer Song is redolent of the sound world of Tippett's opera A Midsummer Marriage and it ends with a brief reference to a favourite of Gregson's, Tippett's Concerto for Orchestra. Michael Ball provides a brief moment of light, airy activity bringing to mind perhaps Tippett's love of Shakespearian fantasy, especially The Tempest. Elgar Howarth juxtaposes a slowed down version of the processional theme with distant recollections of fanfares from King Priam. Philip Wilby has rounded the tribute off with a spectacular fugue. During its inexorable progress Wilby ingeniously introduces the two other birthday references - the three-note musical signature that Elgar Howarth includes in much of his music and the characteristic theme which begins Edward Gregson's substantial work for brass an organ The Trumpets of the Angels. An elaborated reprise of Tippett's little theme is followed by a dynamic coda.- Paul HindmarshDuration: 13.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days