The diversity and variety of brass ensemble traditions is rich and deep, and certainly not limited to Western European art music genres. Today, we will be listening to selections from a playlist of recordings of brass ensembles from around the world, as well as here in the U.S., that illustrate this diversity. My playlist for this particular class offering has grown over the years, and currently contains over two hours and twenty minutes of music and growing. Of course, I will not play every track or every second of every track. I will pick and choose as we go and highlight the many traditions and styles represented. The different categories include:
Today we watched a video of the premiere of Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 3, for two brass quintets, performed by members of the New York Philharmonic and the Empire Brass. It was written and premiered in 1991 for the 100th anniversary of Carnegie Hall. It is one of six short works for varied instrumentation.
From Wikipedia, here is more information about the piece and the other fanfares:
Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman is a series of six short compositions, or “parts” of one 25-minute composition, by Joan Tower. Parts I, II, III and V are scored for brass, Parts IV and VI for full orchestra. The score for the whole series includes 3 trumpets, 4 horns, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, 2 bass drums, 5 cymbals, 2 gongs, tam-tam, tom-toms, the triangle, glockenspiel, marimba, and chimes. Tower wrote Part I in 1987, Part VI twenty-nine years later, in 2016.[1] Along the way, in 2014, the series was added to the National Recording Registry, having been judged “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important.”
The first and most popular of the Fanfares was commissioned by the Houston Symphony
as part of the orchestra's Fanfare Project and was composed in 1986.
It debuted on January 10, 1987, with the Houston Symphony conducted by Hans Vonk. It was originally inspired by Copland’sFanfare for the Common Man
and employs the same instrumentation while adding the glockenspiel,
marimba, chimes, and drums. The piece is about 2 minutes and 41 seconds
long and is dedicated to the conductor Marin Alsop.[3]
It contains an opening flourish, huge percussion strokes, and then a
galloping rhythm that pushes through the rest of the piece to reach the
conclusion.
The second Fanfare was written in 1989 and uses the same
instrumentation as the first while adding percussion. It was
commissioned by Absolut Vodka and premiered at the Lincoln Center in 1989. It was performed by the Orchestra of Saint Luke and is about 3 minutes and 23 seconds long.[4] The third Fanfare was written in 1991 and was commissioned by Carnegie Hall in commemoration of its 100th anniversary. It premiered on May 5, 1991, and was performed by the Empire Brass and members of the New York Philharmonicbrass section. The conductor was Zubin Mehta
and it is about 5 minutes and 15 seconds long. It is laid out on a
larger scale than the others and gradually moves from quiet lyricism to
full-ensemble chords before slowing down into a final coda.
The fourth Fanfare was written in 1992 and was the only one in
the series scored for full orchestra where the brass does not dominate.
However, its propulsive rhythms and sheer energy qualify it as a
fanfare. The piece was commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony, and premiered on October 16, 1992, conducted by William McGlaughlin. The piece is about 4 minutes and 35 seconds long.[5] The fifth Fanfare was written in 1993 and was commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival for the opening of the Joan and Irving Harris Concert Hall in 1993. It is approximately 3 minutes long.
The sixth Fanfare was written in 2016 for full orchestra, commissioned for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Today, we studied the recording Elliott Carter's Brass Quintet (1974) by the American Brass Quintet. Elliott Carter was a very important figure in modern music in the 20th century, who studied with Nadia Boulanger and was influenced by Ives, Stravinsky and Varese and won the Pulitzer prize in music in 1960 and 1973.
Below is a description of the piece in Carter's own words from Wise Music Classical,:
The Brass Quintet was written during the summer of 1974 for the
American Brass Quintet which commissioned the work. This group gave its
premiere on October 20, 1974 at a Charles Ives Festival broadcast by the
BBC from London, and its American premiere at the Library of Congress
on November 15, 1974, and has recorded the work for Columbia Records.
The
music being almost constantly multilayered, as is my Second String
Quartet, separates the players by individualizing their parts, but not
completely, because each instrument shares parts of its repertory with
one of the others. The first trumpet, for instance, near the beginning
plays in a trio with the second trumpet and tenor trombone featuring the
minor sixth light, irregular chords of which the character and interval
become part of the repertory of the three participating instruments. A
bit later, the first trumpet plays another trio with the horn and bass
trombone that features fanfares and quiet, majestic music based on the
perfect fifth, which then become part of the repertory of these three
instruments. The horn, which has the largest repertory of all, however
also frequently uses the augmented fourth which it does not share with
any of the other.
All of the contrasting characters and their
related musical materials form a multilayered piece planned along the
following pattern: Every third (that is, the first, forth, seventh,
etc.) of its overlapping 19 short sections is a brief five-part
quodlibet in which the instruments oppose each other with contrasting
parts of their individual repertories. Between these is a dup preceded
or followed by a trip in which two or three instruments join in music of
similar character. Each dup and trip has a different instrumentation.
The
general plan is interrupted midway through the work by a relatively
extended unaccompanied horn solo which is cut off by angry octaves from
the others. The slow music which began the piece and forms the
background of the first three quodlibets is abandoned after the last of
these, only to return in extended form near the end. The entire work, in
fact, can be heard as one long, slow movement with interruptions.
This
quintet, rather than employing all the resources of color possible with
modern mutes for the brass, relies primarily on linear material,
textures, and the instrumental virtuosity for which the American Brass
Quintet is notable.
--Elliott Carter
To learn more about Carter, visit his Boosey and Hawkes page to view an excellent video on his early years here.
Since the earliest days of brass instruments, brass ensembles of some type have often been involved in popular music in some way. Whether they were part of Renaissance dance music, Civil War regimental brass bands, dixieland bands, part of big bands of the Swing Era, or rock and roll, brass ensembles have proven to be a versatile and sometimes unique addition to popular music. Here is the Apple Music playlist called Brass Ensembles in Popular Music which I played from today. It ranged from Pink Floyd and the Beatles, to Tower of Power and David Byrne . Please share links to any videos or recordings of brass ensembles that fit withing this category.
For more visuals, here is a related YouTube playlist I created. It includes a modern remake of Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother as well as of the 1970 premiere for comparison. Please share your own suggestions to add to this playlist.
On Monday, we heard Ingolf Dahl's "Music for Brass Instrument" (1944) performed by the American Brass Quintet and Center City Brass Quintet. As I mentioned, the piece was written as a sextet (brass quintet with a tenor and a bass trombone) with an optional tuba part in the score.
Description
by Joseph Stevenson (from AllMusic.com)
The Hamburg-born Dahl (his parents were Swedish)
left Germany before World War II and based his musical career in Los
Angeles. By 1944 he was working as a regular accompanistfor comedienne
Gracie Fields and it was while touring with her that he completed this
composition for brass quintet (two trumpets, horn, and two trombones)
with optional tuba in Toronto in May, 1944. It is a pivotal work, for it
is regarded as not only having been the one in which the composer found
his authentic personal voice, but as the source of the modern revival
of the brass quintet. It has even been called (by Julian Menken) "...
the most outstanding work in brass repertory."
It is a thoroughly American-sounding piece in three
movements, adding up to fifteen minutes. Jazzy figurations merge
seamlessly with Baroque-style gestures in the faster parts. The opening
"Chorale Fantasy" is based on the old German chorale tune "Christ lag in
Todesbanden" (Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death. The joyful second
movement evoked spontaneous applause at the work's premiere, and the
third movement, a fugue, brought only redoubled cheering. In addition to
the old chorale, musical material of the piece includes transcriptions
of the telephone numbers of Universal Studies and composer Gail Kubik, Dahl's friend and the composer of the score for the Gerald McBoing Boing animated short film.
What is Gerald McBoing-Boing? (from Wikipedia):
"Gerald McBoing-Boing is an animated short film about a little boy who speaks through sound effects instead of spoken words. It was produced by United Productions of America (UPA) and given wide release by Columbia Pictures on November 2, 1950. It was adapted by Phil Eastman and Bill Scott from a story by Dr. Seuss, directed by Robert Cannon, and produced by John Hubley.
Gerald McBoing-Boing won the 1950 Oscar for Best Animated Short, Gerald McBoing-Boing is In 1994, it was voted #9 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field, making it the highest ranked UPA cartoon on the list. In 1995, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Here is a YouTube video of the short film. See if you here any similarities to Dahl's Music for Brass Instruments.
Hindemith:
Morgenmusik is the first part of a much longer work written by Hindemith for a day-long music festival at a boarding school in Plön, in Northern Germany. Unfortunately and embarrassingly, the recording I hastily selected was one of a transcription for four trombones. I have re-uploaded the score instead of just the parts and created a new playlist in Apple Music featuring over seven different recordings.
The aim of this ambitious initiative is to bring young musicians and
professionals together and approach the composer's ideas "playfully": "I
hope, on the one hand, that this music is perceived as a highlight of
Hindemith's educational oeuvre and among his complete works", says
conductor Jobst Liebrecht. "On the other hand, I hope for the Hans
Werner Henze Music School in Marzahn-Hellersdorf or, in general, for the
educational policy in Berlin that people remember the roots and ideals
with which the music school movement began, and that they move forward
from the right sense of tradition." The "Plöner Musiktag" sets a whole day to music: The four parts,
Morgenmusik [Morning Music], Tafelmusik [Table Music], Kantate [Cantata]
and Abendkonzert [Evening Concert] have been written for different
levels of difficulty and instrumentations – from recorder trio to
orchestral piece and three-part choir. Hindemith wrote the work for a
four-day stay in a boarding school in Plön, Schleswig-Holstein in June
1932 where he made music with pupils.
HINDEMITH Plöner Musiktag • Jobst Liebrecht, cond; Dietrich Henschel (bar);
David Reibel (speaker); RSO Berlin; Marzahn-Hellersdorf Youth SO; Ens of
the Hans Werner Henze Music School; Berlin R Children’s Ch and other
children’s and youth ch • WERGO WER 6728 2 (71:36 Text and Translation)
Morgenmusik. Tafelmusik. Kantate. Abendkonzert.
On June 20, 1932,
A Day of Music at Plön
. The day opened with
Morning Music
, a complex set for brass instruments. Much of the day was spent
rehearsing individuals and ensembles. For a boy who could play only the
xylophone, Hindemith wrote a part, on the spot; for three boys who
couldn’t play any instrument, he wrote recorder trios and had them
trained to play the instrument. During breaks between courses of midday
dinner, the orchestral
Table Music
was played. In the afternoon, a cantata (“Admonition to Youth to
Apply Themselves to Music”) for two soloists, three choruses, and
orchestra which urges children to learn music was sung, spoken (a
melodrama), and played. Hindemith was renowned for his sense of humor;
the cantata is supposedly mostly tongue in cheek, but any wit therein
doesn’t translate—the texts seem deadly serious, almost boarding-school
punitive in attitude. The
Evening Concert
, a 35-minute series of orchestral, ensemble, and instrumental works, closed the day. The point of it all was performing, not creating music for the
ages to be heard by the general public or even the Serious Record
Collector. So there seems little point in evaluating the music (by what
standards?) or the performances (measured against whom?). While parts of
Table Music
have a light touch, most of the Plön music is in Hindemith’s heavy, neobaroque style of the early 1930s.
Morgenmusik
and sections of
Abendkonzert
have been recorded before, but I have not previously encountered
the cantata. This seems to be the first recording of the complete
Plöner Musiktag.
A similar day took place at Montepulciano, Italy, in August of
1980, with local school children premiering Hans Werner Henze’s opera
Pollicino.
Jobst Liebrecht led another performance and a recording in December 1980, sung and played by Berlin school children (
Fanfare
28:1). Liebrecht founded the Marzahn-Hellersdorf Youth Symphony Orchestra in 2005 and performed
Plöner Musiktag
in 2008, at which time the music school was named after Henze.
The booklet lists every performer—258 of them, by my count—but does not
tell us who (or which ensemble) performs what. One must assume that all
mix into most of the works; for example, there are not enough brass
players in any one of the ensembles to fill out
Morning Music
. This studio recording documents that day in 1932 and a slice of Hindemith’s oeuvre, which Wergo is slowly producing
in toto
—at least the majority of it that is owned by Schott Music & Media, the label’s parent company.
Born in Hamburg, Germany to Swedish parents, Ingolf
Dahl (1912-1970) began his formal music education with Philipp Jarnach
at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik, with whom he studied from 1930 to
1932. Fearing the oppression of the Nazi party coming to power, he fled
to Switzerland and continued his studies at the University of Zürich
with Volkmar Andreae and Walter Frey. Dahl's first professional
assignment out of school was as conductor and coach for the Zürich
Stadttheater. In 1938, Dahl emigrated to the United States and settled
in Los Angeles, where he worked as a composer and conductor for radio
and film, gave lectures and piano recitals, and attended master classes
with Nadia Boulanger. He became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1943,
and two years later joined the faculty of the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles, where he taught until his death. As conductor
of the university's symphony orchestra, Dahl gave West Coast premieres
of a wide variety of contemporary works from the US and Europe. His
close collaboration with Igor Stravinsky had a significant effect on
Dahl's own work, leading him to lecture, perform, and arrange
Stravinsky's music as well as translate his Poetics of Music (1947).
Dahl served on the faculty of the Middlebury Composer's Conference in
Vermont and taught at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood
(1952-1955). In 1961 and 1962 he gave goodwill concerts in Germany
sponsored by the US State Department, and from 1964 to 1966 he directed
and conducted at the Ojai Festival in California. In his last years,
Dahl conducted the Los Angeles Guild Opera and again the University of
Southern California symphony orchestra. Among Dahl's many honors are two
Guggenheim Fellowships, two Huntington Hartford Fellowships, an
Excellence in Teaching Award from USC, and the ASCAP Stravinsky Award.
His music has been recorded on a number of labels including Boston
Records, Capstone, Centaur, Chandos, CRI, Crystal, Klavier, Nimbus, and
Summit.
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