SKU: AP.40483S
UPC: 038081456386. English.
Feature your magnificent violas in this Western-flavored section feature that will give your unsung heroes a chance to show off a variety of playing styles. The piece is divided into three distinct parts---a heroic opening theme, a rousing and flashy fiddle melody, and a beautifully flowing legato section. Easy to put together and fun for every section, this is a wonderful way to introduce your audience (and the rest of your string orchestra) to the wide variety of timbres this too-often neglected instrument can achieve. Great for recruiting concerts! This title is available in MakeMusic Cloud.
SKU: KN.19522
UPC: 822795195224.
This collection of flexible instrument trios includes 16 classic melodies that are included in many popular method books. This collection is ideal for taking your student Beyond the Method, and expanding on educational concepts. Part 1 contains the melody, as you might see it in a traditional method book. Part 2 is a harmony line designed to work with the melody, and part 3 is a bass line. This innovative grade 2 collection is published in score form for any combination of 3 like or mixed instruments using the appropriate key-compatible books.
SKU: PE.EP72822
ISBN 9790577011769. 232 x 303mm inches. English.
I have only visited Damascus once, twenty years ago, on the way to Palmyra. I had a purpose (I was writing music for a play about Palmyra’s Queen Zenobia) but essentially I was a tourist. Like any visitor, I was thrilled to step out of the noisy modern city into the magical ancient world of the walled Old City, its vibrant souk leading to the magnificent mosque, and a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets filled with the smell of unleavened bread.
In Palmyra, I was met with extraordinary kindness everywhere. On one occasion, a little Bedouin boy noticed that I was risking sunstroke wandering bare-headed among the spectacular ruins: he showed me how to tie a turban, then took me to have tea with his family in their tent.
Since then, I have watched helplessly as these places of wonder have been devastated and their inhabitants scattered and killed. When the Sacconi Quartet suggested that I might choose a Syrian poet for our collaboration, I welcomed the idea.
I searched for a long time to find a contemporary poet whose work might gain from any music I could imagine. I felt it was important to find first-hand accounts of the Syrian experience – but, of course, I was always reading them in translation. In an anthology called Syria Speaks, I was astonished to read something that looked like prose, but was full of poetry. It was Anne-Marie McManus’s fine translation of Ali Safar’s A Black Cloud in a Leaden White Sky – an eloquent, thoughtful, contained yet vivid account of life in a war-torn country, all the more moving for its restraint.
In setting these words, I have not attempted to imitate Syrian music. However, there is what might be called a linguistic accommodation in my choice of scale, or mode. Several movements are in a mode that I first discovered while writing a cantata commemorating the First World War: it has a tuning that I associate with war, its violence and desolation. This eight-note mode is similar to scales found in Syrian music. I did not choose it in the abstract: it emerged from the harmonies I was exploring in the earlier work, and emerged again as I was looking for the right musical colours to set Ali Safar’s words. In this work, its Arabic aspect is more prominent. - Jonathan Dove
SKU: HL.49018716
ISBN 9790220132339. 9.25x12.0x0.3 inches.
Richard Ayres' Three Small Pieces for String Quartet each have distinct characters that illustrate the composer's vivid imagination and skill for combining energetic, touching and sometimes wild music. The first piece is a short tribute to the Romanian singer Maria Tanase, a long forgotten performer who was once a star in her country. The second is a rough, fast and folk-like section in 11/16 time and the third, subtitled 'Countess Eva von Spendu (on a horse) gallops through the forest (pausing four times to contemplate natural splendour)', contains (in the words of the composer) 'hunting gallops, a Feldmanesque 19 bar blues, some devilish fiddling, moments of repose and contemplation, and a lyrical finale.'.