Results
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£49.95Malcolm Arnold Variations (Score Only)
MALCOLM ARNOLD VARIATIONS was commissioned by Philip Biggs and Richard Franklin for the 20th All England Masters International Brass Band Championship held in the Corn Exchange, Cambridge on 25 May 2008. The work is dedicated to Anthony Day, long time carer of Sir Malcolm Arnold in his final years. I first met Malcolm and Anthony in 1990 and remained in constant touch until Malcolm's passing in 2006. Anthony, of course, remains a friend and plays his own role subliminally in this piece. The work is not based on any of Malcolm Arnold's own themes, rather it is a portrait of him (and by association Anthony Day) through my eyes and as a result of my friendship with both parties over some 18 years. If there is any theme as such it is the personalities of the players, the protagonist and his carer placed together by my own efforts coloured and influenced by aspects of Arnold's style and technique without recourse to direct quotation but through allusion and parody. It is of course designed as a brass band test piece but in my eyes is first and foremost a musical challenge. The pyrotechnical elements are there but always secondary to the musical thrust of the work's structure. I have long beforehand submerged myself in Malcolm Arnold's music and ultimately delivered this tribute. Music Directors will be advised to acquaint themselves with the composer's personal music, particularly the film scores, symphonies, concertos and ballets: the solutions towards a successful interpretation of my piece are all in there - and YES, I want, and sanction, this piece to be interpreted, and therein lies the challenge for those of you 'up front'! The challenge for players is that of virtuosity, ensemble and careful attention to where they are individually in relation to their colleagues - a question of balance, taste and insight. With regard to tempi, as is my usual custom, I have indicated all metronome marks with the prefix circa. I would suggest that the fast music is played at these tempos but that the more rubato moments can be allowed some freedom in expression and fluidity of line. With regard to the type of mutes to be employed - this decision I leave to the discretion of players and conductors. Structurally the work is cast as an Introduction, 20 Variations and a Finale. Some variations are self contained, others run into each other as sequences in the same tempo. In other variations, segments are repeated and developed. I could describe the overall concept as a miniature ballet or a condensed film score - there is much drama and character and the repeated elements assist this in driving the action forward. I have deliberately avoided the more extremely dark qualities of Malcolm's own music in this, my celebration of this master-composer, as I have always viewed (and evidenced by my previous Masters scores Tristan Encounters and Chivalry) that the Cambridge contest is a 'sunshine- affair' and firmly believe that Malcolm Arnold would have had it no other way too!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£34.95Judd: My Hope - Roger Trigg
'My Hope' was written for, and premiered by Enfield Citadel Band (Bandmaster Jonathan Corry) on 11th October, 2013. The work formed part of the band's annual pre-contest festival on the eve of the National Brass Band Championships which are held in the august surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall, London each year. The words 'my hope' appear in both hymns that are referenced in the music. The notes 'E', 'C', 'B' also feature throughout the work as homage to Enfield Citadel Band. The verse of 'My hope is built on nothing less' (S.A.S.B. 662), to the tune 'Solid Rock' (T.B. 446), is then introduced and forms the basis of the end of the first section - set in the minor, unlike the usual setting of the melody. The more sedate middle section that follows features an original theme, again using the notes 'E', 'C', 'B' as a melodic stimulus.The tune 'Michael' (Herbert Howells), to which the text 'All my hope on God is founded' (S.A.S.B. 530) is sung, provided the original impetus for this work. The song features as a new addition to The Salvation Army's 2015 iteration of its song book. It is a noble tune and there are big majestic, organ-like sounds utilised in its final treatment which brings the work to a climactic end.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£59.95Judd: Caelum Corona - Stephen Bulla
Stephen Bulla's 'Caelum Corona' ('Crown of Heaven') portrays, in sound, a Christian's walk in faith, intended metaphorically via a musical narrative reminiscent of the early church pilgrims, their struggles and triumphs. The composer initially evokes the atmosphere of Rome at the time of St. Paul and other martyrs, thus the Latin title. Bulla marks his imaginative tone poem with dark, brooding music in the first two of three parts, in each of which he has embedded an appropriate hymn or song reference as thematic material. The first of these sounds in a minor key following a symphonic exposition made up primarily of fanfare-like motives, the music at times quite harsh and abrasive. The song is Paul's statement of exuberant faith (2 Timothy 1:12) in the midst of prison and persecution: 'For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.' More challenging, aggressive music returns until a further point of reflection on Christ's sacrifice is reached. The music graphically evokes the barren landscape of Golgatha, the horror of the crucifixion, including stark wind sounds, a loss of stability via eerie, dissonant chord clusters, and even the nails being driven into Christ's body. The Baritones and then Flugel Horn softly play 'He died of a broken heart.' Yet the Christian life, despite its perils - both at the time of Paul and now - is a victorious life, and the composer resolves the tensions of the work in a scintillating finale, a brilliant setting of the old song about spiritual warfare and the ultimate triumph of Christ the King: 'Victory for me!' (T.B. 841). The chorus of that tune proclaims: 'No retreating, hell defeating, shoulder to shoulder we stand; God look down, with glory crown our conq'ring band.' That crowning is the same one sought and claimed by St. Paul (2 Timothy 4:8): 'Now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.' Believers look forward to participating in the final coronation of their Saviour - King of Kings and Lord of Lords - while humbly desiring their own 'crown of heaven.'
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£35.00
Darkwood (Score Only)
Born in the Vale of Evesham, Worcestershire, Dan took a keen interest in music from an early age playing tuba and trombone with his local brass band. After leaving school he embarked on a 10 year career as a hotelier integrating it with a developing career as a freelance musician playing double bass, sousaphone and bass saxophone with big bands including the internationally Pasadena Roof Orchestra.In 2003, he enrolled in the Band Musicianship course at Salford University where he studied composition and arranging with Prof. Peter Graham. Dan's first test-piece An Elgar Portrait was selected as the 4th Section set work at the Swiss National Brass Band Championships in 2007 and again at the Pontins Championships the following year. He then went on to write the test-piece New World Sketches which was set as the 2nd Section test-piece for the British Regional Contests in 2009.In 2009, Dan became Composer in Association with the Cory Band, helping them with their winning programmes at several Brass in Concert Championships. In 2012 he became the Arranger in Association with Black Dyke Band and has been involved with many of the band's exciting projects including his arrangement of Recycled for the ground breaking multimedia campaign - Danger Global Warming Project and the band's collaboration with British composer Tolga Kashif in 2012 for his Olympic Anthem Let Your Light Shine.In 2015, Dan had a number of major works performed at International contests which included Realms of Asgard: Yggdrassil - a new test-work commissioned by Jaren Hornmusikkforening to be used as their choice work at the Norwegian Brass Band Championships, Ocean of Storms - an exciting new work for Grimethorpe Colliery Band's Brass in Concert programme and his test-piece Visions which was used as a 4th Section National Finals test-piece.Dan is currently working full time at the University of Salford, lecturing in Composition and Arranging. He continues to work as a freelance composer working with a number of leading soloists, brass and wind bands around the world.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£44.95Judd: Trailblazers
This overture draws its inspiration from the story of the first Household Troops Band. It tells the story of the 1887 band, the subsequent lull of nearly a hundred years and the re-awakening of the Troops phenomenon in 1985. It was originally written in 1995 and featured prominently by the band on its North American tour of 2002. Given the history of the Household Troops Band, it is fitting that this composition is preoccupied with marching. It begins with a marching song played by a solitary muted cornet, symbolic not only of the call to bandsmen to join the evangelical effort but also a muso-dramatic device to indicate the steady increase in members and technical ability! The music quickly develops into stirring versions of 'A robe of white' and 'Storm the forts of darkness' with two early day Salvation Army tunes crucially adding to the narrative; 'Marching on in the light of God' and 'Soldiers of our God, arise!' The second section is a reflective setting of the Herbert Booth song, 'The penitent's plea'. This song serves to represent the many people who were 'saved' during those early day campaigns. The expressive music transports the listener through a period of uncertainty and angst until finally reaching the song, 'There is a message, a simple message, and it's a message for us all'. The final section deals first with the emergence from the annals of history with the muted cornet figure again before, symbolically, the present day band bursts forth with an emphatic statement of 'Would you be free from your burden of sin? There's power in the blood'. The stirring climax represents a fitting tribute to those gallant pioneering musicians and their equally impressive and dedicated contemporaries.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£32.50Vienna Nights (Score Only)
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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£40.00La Fiesta (Score and Parts)
Chick Corea is an American pianist and composer of Sicilian and Spanish descent, whose long career in jazz music continues to this day. A member of Miles Davis's band in the 1960s, he formed his own band Return to Forever in the 1970s before establishing himself as one of the greats of modern jazz.La Fiesta was composed in 1972 and included on Return to Forever's debut album. The music is in one-in-a-bar waltz time and switches between Latin carnival-style and jazz waltz, with stand-up solos for cornet, baritone and tenor horn. This arrangement was performed as part of the Cory Band's winning Brass in Concertprogramme in 2012.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£74.95Eden (Score and Parts)
This work was commissioned by the Brass Band Heritage Trust as the test piece for the final of the 2005 Besson National Brass Band Championship, held at the Royal Albert Hall, London.The score is prefaced by the final lines from Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (completed in 1663), in which Adam and Eve, expelled from Paradise, make their uncertain way into the outside world:"...The world was all before them, where to chooseTheir place of rest, and providence their guide:They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,Through Eden took their solitary way."My work is in three linked sections. In the first, the characters of Adam, Eve and the serpent guarding the Tree of Knowledge are respectively represented by solo euphonium, cornet and trombone. The music opens in an idyllic and tranquil mood and leads into a duet between euphonium and cornet. Throughout this passage the prevailing mood darkens, though the soloists seem to remain oblivious to the increasingly fraught atmosphere. A whip-crack announces the malevolent appearance of the solo trombone who proceeds to engage the solo cornet in a sinister dialogue.The second section interprets the Eden story as a modern metaphor for the havoc mankind has inflicted upon the world, exploiting and abusing its resources in the pursuit of wealth. Though certainly intended here as a comment on the present-day, it is by no means a new idea: Milton himself had an almost prescient awareness of it in Book I of his poem, where men, led on by Mammon:"...Ransacked the centre and with impious handsRifled the bowels of their mother earthFor treasures better hid. Soon had his crewOpened into the hill a spacious woundAnd digged out ribs of gold."So this section is fast and violent, at times almost manic in its destructive energy. At length a furious climax subsides and a tolling bell ushers in the third and final section.This final part is slow, beginning with an intense lament featuring solos for tenor-horn, flgel-horn and repiano cornet and joined later by solo baritone, soprano cornet, Eb-bass and Bb-bass.At one stage in the planning of the work it seemed likely that the music would end here - in despair. Then, mid-way through writing it, I visited the extraordinary Eden Project in Cornwall. Here, in a disused quarry - a huge man-made wound in the earth - immense biomes, containing an abundance of plant species from every region of the globe, together with an inspirational education programme, perhaps offer a small ray of hope for the future. This is the image behind the work's conclusion and the optimism it aims to express is real enough, though it is hard-won and challenged to the last.John Pickard 2005
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£29.50Eden (Score Only)
This work was commissioned by the Brass Band Heritage Trust as the test piece for the final of the 2005 Besson National Brass Band Championship, held at the Royal Albert Hall, London.The score is prefaced by the final lines from Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (completed in 1663), in which Adam and Eve, expelled from Paradise, make their uncertain way into the outside world:"...The world was all before them, where to chooseTheir place of rest, and providence their guide:They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,Through Eden took their solitary way."My work is in three linked sections. In the first, the characters of Adam, Eve and the serpent guarding the Tree of Knowledge are respectively represented by solo euphonium, cornet and trombone. The music opens in an idyllic and tranquil mood and leads into a duet between euphonium and cornet. Throughout this passage the prevailing mood darkens, though the soloists seem to remain oblivious to the increasingly fraught atmosphere. A whip-crack announces the malevolent appearance of the solo trombone who proceeds to engage the solo cornet in a sinister dialogue.The second section interprets the Eden story as a modern metaphor for the havoc mankind has inflicted upon the world, exploiting and abusing its resources in the pursuit of wealth. Though certainly intended here as a comment on the present-day, it is by no means a new idea: Milton himself had an almost prescient awareness of it in Book I of his poem, where men, led on by Mammon:"...Ransacked the centre and with impious handsRifled the bowels of their mother earthFor treasures better hid. Soon had his crewOpened into the hill a spacious woundAnd digged out ribs of gold."So this section is fast and violent, at times almost manic in its destructive energy. At length a furious climax subsides and a tolling bell ushers in the third and final section.This final part is slow, beginning with an intense lament featuring solos for tenor-horn, flgel-horn and repiano cornet and joined later by solo baritone, soprano cornet, Eb-bass and Bb-bass.At one stage in the planning of the work it seemed likely that the music would end here - in despair. Then, mid-way through writing it, I visited the extraordinary Eden Project in Cornwall. Here, in a disused quarry - a huge man-made wound in the earth - immense biomes, containing an abundance of plant species from every region of the globe, together with an inspirational education programme, perhaps offer a small ray of hope for the future. This is the image behind the work's conclusion and the optimism it aims to express is real enough, though it is hard-won and challenged to the last.John Pickard 2005
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£29.95St. Andrew's Variations (Score Only)
This piece, written for the East Anglian Brass Band Festival in 1998, takes the form of eight variations and a finale, loosely based on the descending third motif heard in the initial theme. It was initially composed for junior band, and expanded and rescored for full band in 2006. There is no significance in the title, other than the fact it was written by a Scotsman to be played in the St Andrew's Hall, in Norwich!Alan Fernie was born and brought up in the Scots mining village of Newtongrange. From the age of 13 he learned to play the trombone both at school and with the local brass band, going on to study music in Glasgow and London. After a short period working as an orchestral musician, Alan moved into instrumental education, spending over 20 years teaching brass in schools all over the East of Scotland. It was during this time that he began to conduct and he has since directed bands at all levels, winning many awards. He first wrote for brass whilst still a student, and his music is now played, recorded and published throughout the world.In 2009, Alan was honoured with the "President's Award" from the Scottish Brass Band Association for services to banding. He is also proud to be associated as composer in residence with the acclaimed charity "Brass for Africa", with whom he spent two months recently teaching in Kampala, Uganda. Living in the Scottish Borders, Alan now works as a freelance musician, finding time to write, teach, conduct, judge, perform and act as compere throughout the UK and beyond.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days