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ISBN 9781574633948. UPC: 888680013325.

This continuation of volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 provides band directors with a ready-made curriculum developed to incorporate comprehensive-musicianship training through quality band literature. This volume features Courtly Airs and Dances by Ron Nelson, Albanian Dance by Shelley Hanson and Shortcut Home by Dana Wilson. Every unit study integrates technical skills, musical knowledge and creative projects that lead student musicians to an enlightened and expressive performance. Student workbooks for each of the featured works may be downloaded. Each unit study includes: · Ear training · Rhythm studies · Essential skills information for teaching the compositional elements of music · Rehearsal strategies for addressing common ensemble issues · Creative projects · Active listening activities · Sample teaching schedule · Unit quiz (and answer sheet) · Student practice plan · Optional band projects Click here for a digital version of Student Workbooks for this publication. Click here for a YouTube video on Guide to Band Masterworks - Volume 5.

SKU: HL.348318

ISBN 9781540097347. UPC: 840126930009. 9.0x12.0x0.731 inches.

A giant Christmas collection with easy-to-read and play arrangements for all keyboardists! E-Z Play Today songbooks feature simple arrangements with authentic-sounding chords and melody lines with a minimum number of page turns. The books also include lyrics for ultimate playing and sing-along enjoyment. This collection features a variety of holiday favorites, including: Baby, It's Cold Outside • The Christmas Shoes • The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) • Christmas Time Is Here • Do You Hear What I Hear • Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas • I'll Be Home for Christmas • The Little Drummer Boy • Mary, Did You Know? • Merry Christmas, Darling • O Holy Night • Silver Bells • Ukrainian Bell Carol • White Christmas • and many more! Over 300 pages!

About Hal Leonard E-Z Play Today

For organs, pianos, and electronic keyboards. E-Z Play Today is the shortest distance between beginning music and playing fun. Now there are more than 300 reasons why you should play E-Z Play Today. * World's largest series of music folios * Full-size books - large 9 x 12 format features easy-to-read, easy-to-play music * Accurate arrangements... simple enough for the beginner, but accurate chords and melody lines are maintained * Eye-catching, full-color covers * Lyrics... most arrangements include words and music * Most up-to-date registrations - books in the series contain a general registration guide, as well as individual song rhythm suggestions * Guitar Chord Chart - all songs in the series can also be played on guitar.

SKU: HL.277282

UPC: 840126915006. 6.75x10.5 inches.

Program note:

Looking Up is a piece for large chorus and orchestra, and is in three sections, played without pause. In the 16th century, a variety of psalters in meter were printed in England, with the idea of making psalm-singing something that could happen easily at home, with the rhyming meter being an aid to memorization. These translations are wonderful exercises in brevity and sometimes clumsy rhymemaking, and were usually prefaced by a lengthy explanation as to their merits; the title of one of the first such volumes in English is: The Psalter of Dauid newely translated into Englysh metre in such sort that it maye the more decently, and wyth more delyte of the mynde, be reade and songe of al men. I thought it would be appropriate to set one of these introductions, and the first section of Looking Up sets the preface to Thomas Ravenscroft's psalter (1621), in which he writes: “The singing of Psalmes (assay the Doctors) comforteth the sorrowfull, pacifieth the angry, strengtheneth the weake, humbleth the proud, gladdeth the humble, stirres up the slow, reconcileth enemies, lifteth up the heart to heavenly things, and uniteth the Creature to his Creator.”

It begins meditatively, but eventually grows agitated and fervent, with a vision of the “quire of Angels and Saints” “redoubling anddescanting” - an ecstatic and terrifying vision of the skies opening up. Ravenscroft then encourages the use of instrumental musicfor worship, at which point, a long, acrobatic orchestral interlude with jagged edges antagonizes the choir, who sing a kind of private, anxious meditation on two pitches.

One of the most delicious biblical texts is an Apocryphal prayer known as the Benedicite or the Prayer of the Three Children (the same who were rescued by an angel after King Nebuchadnezzar tried to have them burnt in an oven for not bowing to his image). The text is repetitive, obsessive, and a gift to composers - each line is an invocation of an element of the natural world, followed by the phrase, “blesse ye the Lord, praise him & magnify him for ever.” In Looking Up, the setting begins with three solo voices, and then grows to include the whole choir, itemizing the whole of creation. The idea that these boys are spared from the furnace and then five minutes later are saying, “O ye the fire and warming heate, blesse ye the Lord...” has always felt very loaded to me, and the orchestra plays with this conflict between joyful praise and a more terrible (in the 16th-century sense) awefor the divine.

The text for the third, and shortest, section is taken from Christopher Smart's (1722-1771) A Song to David, purportedly written during his confinement in a mental asylum. This ode to King David points out how David, as the author of some of the Psalms, observes the whole world from the “clustering spheres” to the “nosegay in the vale.&rdquo.