Results
-
£79.95The Lost Village of Imber (Brass Band - Score and Parts) - Bond, Christopher
The Lost Village of Imber was commissioned by Bratton Silver Band in 2019 in celebration of 160 years of the band; 1859-2019. Structured in three movements, the complete work was premiered by Cory Band at Wiltshire Music Centre in February 2020.The village of Imber on Salisbury Plain had been inhabited for over one thousand years when it was evacuated in 1943 to make way for military training in the Second World War. At the time, with preparations for the Allied invasion of Europe underway, most villagers put up no resistance, despite being upset, with the belief that they'd return once the war had concluded. To this day, Imber and its surrounding land remain a military training ground. The villagers never returned, and just the shell of what was once a community remains.Structured in three movements, it is on this very real story that the work is based, setting out the series of events of 1943 in chronological order.The first movement, On Imber Downe, portrays a sense of jollity and cohesiveness, a community of individuals living and working together before news of the evacuation had broken. Sounds of the village are heard throughout, not least in a series of percussive effects, the anvil of the blacksmith; the cowbell of the cattle and the bells of the church.The second movement, The Church of St. Giles, begins mysteriously and this sonorous, atmospheric opening depicts Imber in its desolate state and the apprehension of residents as they learn they have to leave their homes. Amidst this is the Church, a symbol of hope for villagers who one day wish to return, portrayed with a sweeping melodic passage before the music returns to the apprehension of villagers facing eviction around their sadness at losing their rural way of life.In complete contrast, the third movement, Imemerie Aeternum, portrays the arrival of the military, complete with the sounds of the ammunition, firing and tanks, sounds which were all too familiar to those living in the surround areas. To close, the Church of St. Giles theme returns in a triumphant style, representing the idea that the church has always been, even to this day, a beacon of hope for the villagers and local community, both the centrepiece and pinnacle of a very real story.Duration: 13.30
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
-
£95.00A Wartime Sketchbook (Brass Band - Score and Parts) - Walton, William - Hindmarsh, Paul
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
-
£95.00Variations on a Theme of Michael Tippett (Brass Band - Score and Parts) - Hindmarsh, Paul
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
-
£30.00That Moaning Trombone - Carl D Bethel, Sandy Coffin
Comic March One-StepCommissioned by John Wallace, this arrangement of That Moaning Trombone has been crafted by Sandy Coffin through close listening of the available recordings of the Harlem Hellfighters Band. Sandy had been heavily involved with the Historic Brass Society symposium 2017 held in New York and assisted John with his research on this fascinating band and the style of music it generated.Eye-witness accounts refer to the 369th band 'dancing' rather than 'marching'. Above all, in modern performance, finding a 'dancing beat' is crucial to a successful performance of this Ragtime march in order to do justice to the great pioneering work of James Reese Europe.Note the the reckless abandon with which glissando, at that time a novel effect, is used!Look and Listen (courtesy of the Tullis Russell Mills Band):Background to the Harlem HellfightersThe US Army 369th Regiment, made up largely of African-Americans from New York, became known as the Harlem Hellfighters because of the heroic reputation which accrued to them during the actions they engaged in during the First World War in Europe.James Reese Europe was one of the most active African-American composer/musical directors in the pre-war American music scene. The legendary Harlem Hellfighters Band, which he assembled in 1917 from African-American and Puerto Rican musicians, came at an important transitional point in musical history. A new form of music called jazz was emerging from Ragtime and the performing style of Europe's band was immersed in the flow of this new direction.Europe's Harlem Hellfighters influenced and inspired everyone who heard them, including the welcoming crowd when they disembarked in France, bowled over by their swinging rendition of La Marseillaise. Reese Europe became a war hero, commanding a machine-gun unit as well as the band.On return from War in 1919 the band led a ticker-tape parade along Fifth Avenue in New York and soon made about 30 shellac recordings. These recordings display some of the fingerprints of their performing style: ragging, improvising, muting, wailing, smearing (their word for glissando) - and from the evidence of their recordings they took the printed page as a blueprint for individuality.In May 1919 during the Hellfighters' triumphant coast-to-coast tour after their return, James Reese Europe was tragically murdered, bringing to premature close, at the age of 39, the work of a great musical innovator.
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 3-5 working days
-
£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
-
£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
-
£49.95That Promised Land - Jonathan Bates
DURATION: 8 minutes. DIFFICULTY: 1st+. That Promised Land was the culmination of 5 years of my personal interest in spiritual music since performing Michael Tippett's wonderful Oratorio 'A Child of Our Time' at the RNCM. Tippett's work combines original material, with music inspired and based upon spirituals, whilst all of the major 'chorus' sections are direct settings of those tunes. This was a work that had stuck with me for a long time, and one I tried to emulate in a smaller form with this work. The title is a quote from one of the verses of the spiritual 'Deep River'. This piece was composed for Jaren Hornmusikkforening as part of their programme for the 2018 SIDDIS Championships held in Stavanger, Norway. .
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
-
£29.95Keep in Step! (Brass Band - Score and Parts) - Ponsford, Steven
The Salvation Army song Keep in step is given a tongue-in-cheek treatment, with the irony of a song that speaks of keeping in step at all times being used in a time signature that would be impossible to march to! This does make the music technically challenging and therefore careful preparation is needed to ensure everything remains within the correct bear, and that the rhythms sound convincing to the listener. There is also a touch of Broadway thrown in, with a recurring motif reminiscent of Gershwin's appropriately named Fascinating Rhythm.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
-
£35.00Sussex Carol (Brass Band - Score and Parts) - McKenzie, Jock
This carol is also known by its first line "On Christmas Night all Christians Sing". It was discovered by Cecil Sharp in Gloucestershire and notably by Ralph Vaughan Williams in Sussex. Vaughan Williams heard it sung by Harriet Verrall of Monk's Gate, near Horsham, Sussex (hence "Sussex Carol"). It is the melody that Harriet Verrall sang that Vaughan Williams transcribed and published in 1919. It is this same version that is still very popular today. Duration: 3.30
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
-
£34.95
Happy Land (Cornet Solo with Brass Band - Score and Parts) - Camsey, Terry
This composition is a very challenging one for the soloist and requires the accompaniment to be subservient at all times. The soloist will find it helpful to, generally, adopt a very light and playful style. As a young aspiring cornet player, the composer was influenced by a number of soloists of that day, one being Del Staigers of the Goldman Band in the USA. Many of the musical motifs reflect that influence and it is hoped that this solo will, in turn, inspire the many aspiring cornet players of today.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
View Music