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£10.00Endurance
DescriptionMen wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. - Ernest Shackleton, 4 Burlington StreetEndurance takes its title from the ship used by Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914-15. After many months of fundraising (and reputedly running the above advert in The Times) the Endurance set sail from Plymouth on 6 August 1914. Whilst at sea news of the outbreak of war led Shackleton to put his ship and crew at the disposal of the Admiralty, but their services were not required and they were encouraged to continue. On October 26 1914 they left Grytviken on South Georgia for the Antarctic continent, hoping to find the pack ice shrinking in the Antarctic spring. Two days later, however, they encountered unseasonable ice which slowed their progress considerably. On 15 January 1915, when Endurance was only 200 miles from her intended landfall at Vahsel Bay, the ship became beset by ice which had been compressed against the land to the south by gale force winds. Trapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea, the ship spent the Antarctic winter driven by the weather further from her intended destination until, on 21 November 1915 Endurance broke up forcing the crew to abandon ship and set up camp on the ice at a site they named "Patience Camp".The crew spent several weeks on the ice. As the southern spring started to reduce the extent of the ice shelf they took to their three lifeboats, sailing across the open ocean to reach the desolate and uninhabited Elephant Island. There they used two of the boats to build a makeshift shelter while Shackleton and five others took the largest boat, an open lifeboat named the 'James Caird' and sailed it for 800 terrifyingly dangerous miles across the vast and lonely Southern Atlantic to South Georgia - a journey now widely regarded as one of the greatest and most heroic small-boat journeys ever undertaken. After landing on the wrong side of the island and having to climb over a mountain range in the dark with no map, Shackleton and his companions finally stumbled back into the Grytviken whaling station on 19 May 1916.After resting very briefly to recover his strength, Shackleton then began a relentless campaign to beg or borrow a ship to rescue the rest of his crew from Elephant Island; whaling ships were not strong enough to enter polar ice, but on 30 August 1916, over two years after their departure from Plymouth, Shackleton finally returned to Elephant Island aboard a steam tug borrowed from the Chilean government. Although some were in poor health, every member of the Endurance crew was rescued and returned home alive.Endurance is dedicated to the memory of my mum, who passed away in September 2017.Listen to a computer generated preview and follow the score below:
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£40.46Verklarte Nacht (Brass Band) Arnold Schoenberg arr. Rob Bushnell
Composed in just three weeks in 1899, Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night) is a string sextet in one movement by Arnold Schoenberg. Whilst known better for tone rows, his dodecaphonic music and the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg was a master of harmony (writing a number of books on the subject) and, in his early life, was inspired by the music of Brahms and Wagner. This is his best-known tonal work. Its description as a tone poem is not surprising given it takes its inspiration from Richard Dehmel's poem of the same name, as well as Schoenberg's strong feelings towards his future wife, Mathilde Zemlinsky, sister of his teacher, Alexander von Zemlinsky. The work is said to have five sections, one for each of the stanzas in the poem. The poem, from 1896, describes a man and woman walking through a dark forest on a moonlit night. The woman shares a secret with him, that she is pregnant but not with his child. The man reflects upon this before warmly accepting (and forgiving) the news. The work premiered on 18 March 1902 in the Vienna Musikverein by the Rose Quartet. As was normal at the time, Schoenberg produced a string orchestra version that was premiered on 29 November 1916 in Prague, conducted by Zemlinsky, which was later revised in 1943 to better support the soloists, also adding more articulation and tempo markings. Whilst the piece was controversial at the time, both musically and due to the poem's "inappropriate" subject matter, Richard Dehmel himself was impressed, writing "I had intended to follow the motives of my text in your composition, but soon forgot to do so, I was so enthralled by the music." This arrangement is for the British-style brass band, with alternative parts for horns in F and bass-clef lower brass. To view a recording of the original composition please visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqODySSxYpc. Difficulty Level: 2nd Section + Duration: approx. 6.40 minutes Sheet music available from www.brassband.co.uk Instrumentation: Soprano Cornet Eb Solo Cornet Bb Repiano Cornet Bb 2nd Cornet Bb 3rd Cornet Bb Flugel Horn Bb Solo Horn Eb 1st Horn Eb 2nd Horn Eb 1st Baritone Bb 2nd Baritone Bb 1st Trombone Bb 2nd Trombone Bb Bass Trombone Euphonium Bb Bass Eb Bass BbTimpani Percussion 1-3
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
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£79.95Amundsen - Jonathan Bates
DURATION: 14'00". DIFFICULTY: 1st+. 'Amundsen' was commissioned by rskog Brass, Norway for their winning performance at the 2020 Norwegian National Championships held at the Grieghallen in Bergen. In December 1911, Norwegian Roald Amundsen gained global fame by becoming the first explorer to lead a team to the geographic South Pole. Amundsen and 4 other members of his team arrived 5 weeks ahead of a rival team from the UK led by Robert Falcon Scott, all of which perished on their attempted return from the pole. Initially when Amundsen's team set out in 1910, they were under the impression that they would be making the far shorter journey to the arctic drift to attempt to reach the North Pole, but Amundsen had received news that American explorers Peary and Cook had beaten them to this goal, and so Amundsen's focus changed southward. 'Fram, Forward' - 'Fram' (translating to English as "forward") was the name of the ship Amundsen used for this particular polar expedition. Amundsen had only informed 2 people of his real intentions of conquering the South Pole when the ship first left port in Kristiansand before heading south to the Portuguese island of Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean. After weeks at sea - causing the uninformed members of the crew to raise a number of questions and produce a general feel of uncertainty and low spirits - it was here that Amundsen announced his true plans to the rest of his crew. They were asked whether they wished to continue with their expedition, to which all - some begrudgingly - agreed to sail on to the South Pole, through the great Ice Barrier before docking in the Bay of Whales on the Ross Ice Shelf. 'Ross Ice Shelf' - Upon Amundsen's arrival in the Bay of Whales, the team were greeted by the sight of the enormous ice plateau's and glaciers, towering into the Antarctic sky. In 1907, Ernest Shackleton had attempted - and failed - to reach the South Pole, but his route and mapping was by now well documented. Scott and the UK team were to follow this route, whereas Amundsen and his men forged their own way to the pole through unchartered territory and deadly terrain littered with deep crevasses and canyons. The music here though, is a picture of tranquility. The eerie silence of total emptiness with only the heavy snow falling around Amundsen as Fram and the Bay of Whales disappears into the distance, faced by the maginute of the expedition ahead. 'Advance to Polheim' - The first new challenge Amundsen discovered on this route was a rough, sharp and extremely steep glacier (which was later named the Axel heiberg Glacier after the Norwegian monarch who funded much of the expedition), which would take his team up from sea level to an altitude of over 9,000ft in just 20 miles, with most of this over just 7 miles. Once scaled, only the vast Antarctic Plateau stood between Amundsen and the pole. Here the race began, with only one aim - victory for himself, his team, and for the whole of Norway. .
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
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£29.95Cafe 1719 - Jonathan Bates
DURATION: 2'30". DIFFICULTY: 1st Section+. 'Caf 1719' was composed for the Wantage Silver Band as part of their entertainment contest sets based on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach in 2019. This particular short, jazz-inspired work is composed in tribute to the great French Pianist Jacques Loussier (1934-2019) who received global acclaim for his jazz interpretations of Bach's music, along with many other classical composers. Despite being born in the same year and living in the same country, Bach and Handel never actually met, but what if they had? Cafe 1917 acts as a musical meeting point - in a fictional Jazz Cafe by the Rhine, with the tenor horn section performing a 'Loussier-esque' version of Bach's 'Prelude No.2 in C Minor' whilst on the other side of the cafe, the trombone section follow suit with their take on Handel's 'Bourree from Music for the Royal Fireworks'. Eventually the two meet, share ideas and incorporate them into each other's melodies. Amongst the 2 main featured works by Bach and Handel, the tutti interludes are constructed on music from Bach's 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor'. .
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
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£34.95SLOW RIDE IN A STATIC MACHINE, A (Brass Band) - Lawrence, Phil
A Slow Ride in a Static Machine was inspired some time ago when my (late) Father came to visit me "down in London" as he put it. It was based not on one of his circular mishaps, but on several! He was always directed carefully, but refused to carry a map in the car! At one time when I lived in North London I would meet him outside the capital, and he would then follow be back to my place, but after I moved to East London I made him bite the navigational bullet and transverse the 'M25 Orbital'. His main problem seemed to be getting off this mesmerising circular cark park. He would often phone (in a weary tone) from the Dartford Tunnel (which is 5 junctions past the one he needed to get off at), asking me to, "bring him in" so to speak. I would always refuse. And then, he would do the opposite (especially when travelling at night), he would phone me up from near Cambridge (he'd gone the wrong way up the M11 away from London by 45 miles), and would ask where he was!The title is obviously a play on John Adams' composition, A Short Ride In A Fast Machine. This quirky tone poem starts as a wind-up by using those unwanted intervals of augmented 4th's and minor 9th's & 7th's in the main tune, before hearing the road works, the juggernauts multi horns, fender-benders, ambulance and police sirens! This then all works to a back beat on kit. The wind-up start gets to an almost Go-Go 1960's Disco middle section (the nostalgic hay-days of the open road), where our wind-up tune falls into place and we all relax as we can now drive at 42.1 mph! We DC, and then get into a right car mess in the Coda!Phil Lawrence.Duration:4:00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£25.00Canzona XIII
DescriptionCanzona XIII, also known as Canzon Septimi Octavi Toni a 12, was first published in 1597 as part of a collection entitled 'Symphoniae Sacrae' - this collection was a mixture of instrumental and choral pieces, and also included the famous Sonata Pian'e Forte, probably his best known work.Gabrieli was born in Venice sometime between 1554 and 1557 and studied with the renowned Dutch composer Orlando di Lassus. He also studied with his uncle, Andrea Gabrieli, and eventually succeeded him as the organist and composer at St Mark's Basilica in Venice. Already renowned as a musical centre, Venice became a magnet for composers wishing to study with Gabrieli after 'Symphoniae Sacrae' was published.Like many of his works, this Canzona was written to take advantage of the unique layout of St Mark's, which had galleries on three sides where the musicians could be placed to create novel spatial effects - utterly new and exciting for sixteenth century listeners. Canzona XIII has three different antiphonal 'choirs' and in this arrangement the band is split into three groups to reflect Gabrieli's innovative idea. Ideally the three groups should be clearly separated so the the antiphonal effect comes across clearly, although this will of course depend on the performance space. On no account should the band remain in its normal seated formation!As Gabrieli didn't have any percussionists (and percussion was widely thought inappropriate for music performed in church anyway) there are no percussion parts in this music.This arrangement was first performed by the Coppull and Standish Band conducted by Andrew Baker in 2009.You can follow a preview of the score while listening to an audio export of the music below!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£16.00Sonata Pian'e Forte
DescriptionSonata Pian'e Forte means an instrumental piece using soft and loud dynamics. A "Sonata" (at this time) meant a piece for instruments (as opposed to voices). It was probably written to be played as part of a service at St Mark's, Venice. This is the earliest known piece to specify both the instruments to be played AND the dynamics in the written music.Gabrieli was born in Venice sometime between 1554 and 1557 and studied with the renowned Dutch composer Orlando di Lassus. He also studied with his uncle, Andrea Gabrieli, and eventually succeeded him as the organist and composer at St Mark's Basilica in Venice. Already renowned as a musical centre, Venice became a magnet for composers wishing to study with Gabrieli after 'Symphoniae Sacrae' was published.Like many of his works, Sonata Pian'e Forte was written to take advantage of the unique layout of St Mark's, which had galleries on three sides where the musicians could be placed to create novel spatial effects - utterly new and exciting for sixteenth century listeners. Sonata Pian'e Forte has two different antiphonal 'choirs' and in this arrangement the band is split into two groups to reflect Gabrieli's innovative idea. Ideally the two groups should be clearly separated so the the antiphonal effect comes across clearly, although this will of course depend on the performance space. On no account should the band remain in its normal seated formation!As Gabrieli didn't have any percussionists (and percussion was widely thought inappropriate for music performed in church anyway) there are no percussion parts in this music.This arrangement is available for full brass band or 8-piece brass ensemble andwas first performed by the Blackley Band conducted by Andrew Baker in 2004.Listen to a computer realisation and follow the score in the video below:Duration approximately 4'20".
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£35.00strange geometry
Descriptionstrange geometrywas commissioned by Morgan Griffiths and the Hammonds Saltaire Band for their performance at the Brass in Concert Championships of 2015.As a bit of a space/sci-fi geek, as well as a musician, two events during the summer of 2015 had a particular effect on me. The first was the tragic early death in a plane crash of the famous film composer James Horner. Horner's music, particularly in films like 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan', 'Avatar', 'Apollo 13' and even his debut in Roger Corman's 1980 budget film 'Battle Beyond the Stars', defined for a generation the sound of sci-fi at the cinema. Along with John Williams he created the vocabulary for those who wish to express other-worldly wonder in music and his inventive talent will be much missed in an industry where originality has become something of a dirty word in recent years.The second event was the epic flyby of Pluto by the NASA New Horizons spacecraft. There are many reasons to find this mission inspiring - for example, the scientists and engineers behind it created a craft that has travelled at 37,000 mph for nine years and three billion miles to arrive within seventy-two seconds of the predicted time for the flyby. That they achieved this with such accuracy is an outstanding tribute to humanity's ingenuity and insatiable curiosity. However, the most exciting aspect of the mission was the clear, high resolution pictures of this unthinkably remote and inhospitable world beamed back to mission control. The best previous image of Pluto was an indistinct fuzzy blob - suddenly we could see mountains made of ice, glaciers of methane and carbon monoxide and nitrogen fog - features previously unimagined on a world thought to be a slightly dull ball of cold rock. The BBC's venerable astronomy programme 'The Sky at Night' waxed lyrical about these newly discovered features, referring to "the surprising discoveries of mountains and strange geometry on the surface of this cold distant world".I like to think that Horner would have been as inspired as I have been by this real-life science story, and this piece uses some of the vocabulary of the sci-fi movie soundtrack in a tribute to the memory of a great musician and to the inspirational geeks at NASA who have boldly taken us where no-one has gone before.Note: This work comes with a B4 portrait score. Listen to a preview and follow the music below!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£32.00The Cistercians
DescriptionThe Cistercianswas written during December 2003 and January 2004 as an entry for Morecambe Band's Centenary New Music Competition, which it went on to win. The first two performances were at the final of this competition, part of the band's 100th Anniversary Concert at The Dome in Morecambe on 9 July 2004.The music was inspired by visits to three of Britain's great Cistercian Abbeys; Valle Crucis, Fountains and Rievaulx. The Cistercian Order was founded at Citeaux in France in the 11th Century and was based on the principles of austerity, humility and piety. Cistercian Abbeys were deliberately sited in remote, difficult areas. Despite this many of them, especially Rievaulx, became immense centres of commerce and power, with ever more complex administration and hierarchies.In a way the music reflects this; all the material in the piece is derived from two simple motifs played by flugel and solo horn in the opening bars and becomes more complex and further removed from the original material as the piece develops. After a tranquil opening section a fugal chorale develops over a medieval-style "tenor" - a stretched out version of one of the original motifs. A burst of semiquavers leads into a faster, folk-dance type section - our medieval abbey has become a bustling trade centre - before rhythmic quaver pulses in the horns and cornets accompany powerful chords in the low brass; this is another "tenor" derived from the opening motifs. A short development section, including the folk dance "hocketing" round the band and a slightly disjointed 10/8 section leads to a restatement of the fugal chorale from the beginning before a frenetic coda brings the work to a triumphant conclusion.Performance Notes:Percussion instruments required are Bass Drum, Suspended Crash Cymbal, Glockenspiel, 2 x Tom-toms, Snare Drum, Tambourine, Tam-Tam, 2 x Timpani (G-C, C-F), Triangle, Wood Block. All cornets will require metal stratight mutes and all except soprano require cup mutes. All trombones require cup and metal straight mutes.You can follow a preview of the score in the video below.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£10.00Kopanitsa
DescriptionKopanitsa was commissioned by Gavin Pritchard, who is also the work's dedicatee and gave the first performance with the Tongwynlais Temperance Band conducted by Gareth Pritchard at the Butlins Mineworkers Championship on 20 January 2008, winning the prize for best soloist as a result. He has recorded it on the CD "Enter the Galaxies" accompanied by the Cory Band conducted by Robert Childs.Gavin had requested a virtuoso showpiece featuring as many instruments as possible. The solo part is therefore written for vibraphone (bowed and struck), 10 x tuned tom toms, 5 x suspended cymbals plus hi-hat and a xylophone. The soloist's 'choreography' therefore forms an integral part of the performance. This can be seen to great effect in Gavin's performance of the work at the 2013 Brass in Concert Championship with Tredegar Band, available on the DVD of the event from World of Brass. A 'kopanitsa' is a Bulgarian folk dance that traditionally features two slow beats and two quick beats, reflected in the central 10/8 section. The music is deliberately Balkan in character, using the characteristic modes of Greek and Bulgarian folk music, and accelerates regularly to finish at breakneck speed. The tom-tom section marked 'ad lib.' after [D] can be improvised if the soloist wishes.You can follow the score in the preview video below!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days