SKU: SU.50014000
Copyright 2003. Published by: Seesaw Music.
SKU: CF.CAS147
ISBN 9781491160916. UPC: 680160919512.
A Basque Carol (also known as Gabriel's Message) originated from the 13th or 14th century. This brilliantly crafted tune is at once hauntingly beautiful, yet warm and joyous. The lasting power of this song is in the craftsmanship of the melody. Its contours are complex and skillful, yet incredibly simple to sing. A Basque Carol's popularity can also be attributed to it's elegant translation into English by Sabine Baring-Gould. While translations often feel blunt or coarse, this one is especially poetic (his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame). In this orchestration, a flowing, cinematic style is combined with rich, thickly-textured string voicings inspired by composer Ralph Vaughn Williams. This graceful arrangement features an obbligato line on solo recorder (optional solo flute or violin). It may be performed by orchestra and soloist alone, or with soprano and alto choir (or S/A soloists). There is even a moment quoted from another favorite holiday carol, Jesu Bambino. A lovely addition to your next holiday program!.A Basque Carol (also known as Gabriel's Message) originated from the 13th or 14th century. This brilliantly crafted tune is at once hauntingly beautiful, yet warm and joyous. The lasting power of this song is in the craftsmanship of the melody. Its contours are complex and skillful, yet incredibly simple to sing. A Basque Carol's popularity can also be attributed to it's elegant translation into English by Sabine Baring-Gould. While translations often feel blunt or coarse, this one is especially poetic (his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame). In this orchestration, a flowing, cinematic style is combined with rich, thickly-textured string voicings inspired by composer Ralph Vaughn Williams. This graceful arrangement features an obbligato line on solo recorder (optional solo flute or violin). It may be performed by orchestra and soloist alone, or with SATB choir. There is even a moment quoted from another favorite holiday carol, Jesu Bambino. A lovely addition to your next holiday program!.A Basque Carol (also known as Gabriel’s Message) originated from the 13th or 14th century. This brilliantly crafted tune is at once hauntingly beautiful, yet warm and joyous. The lasting power of this song is in the craftsmanship of the melody. Its contours are complex and skillful, yet incredibly simple to sing. A Basque Carol’s popularity can also be attributed to it’s elegant translation into English by Sabine Baring-Gould. While translations often feel blunt or coarse, this one is especially poetic (“his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flameâ€). In this orchestration, a flowing, cinematic style is combined with rich, thickly-textured string voicings inspired by composer Ralph Vaughn Williams. This graceful arrangement features an obbligato line on solo recorder (optional solo flute or violin). It may be performed by orchestra and soloist alone, or with SATB choir. There is even a moment quoted from another favorite holiday carol, Jesu Bambino. A lovely addition to your next holiday program!
About Carl Fischer Concert String Orchestra Series
Thi s series of pieces (Grade 3 and higher) is designed for advancing ensembles. The pieces in this series are characterized by:
SKU: CF.CM9734
ISBN 9781491161142. UPC: 680160919734. Key: A minor. English. Basque Carol.
A Basque Carol (also known as Gabriel's Message) holds a special place in Western music. The carol originates from Basque country around the 13th century, based on the Latin hymn, Angelus ad Virginem (likely of Franciscan origin). The tune quickly spread throughout Europe, finding popularity in Britain where it was even referenced in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Playing so sweetly that the chamber rang; / and Angelus ad virginem he sang. . .. Interestingly, the melody we know and love today is derived from the original Basque version. In my view, this tune is a perfect example of melody-crafting. It is at once hauntingly beautiful, yet warm and joyous. Its contours are complex, dramatic, yet singable. I believe this melodic accessibility is the key to the song's lasting popularity. I would also attribute A Basque Carol's continued popularity to its elegant translation into English (by Sabine Baring-Gould, who rediscovered the original Basque tune). Translations often risk sounding unimaginative, coarse, and blunt. This translation is strikingly different. It was graced with an especially poetic translation including lines such as his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame. I am very excited to offer a new perspective on this classic carol, joining the tradition of composers preserving and reimagining a priceless medieval melody. My first goal was to create a flowing, richly-textured, even cinematic string accompaniment for the choir. This approach was very much inspired by the dense, string-writing style of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. My second goal was to make the arrangement flexible enough to be performed with only choir, only strings, or (best of all) both ensembles combined. To further complement this approach, I've added an obligato line for a solo recorder (solo flute or violin work just as well). If you listen carefully, you will hear a quote from my other favorite holiday carol, Jesu Bambino. I hope you enjoy performing A Basque Carol. I especially hope that you sense the ancient magic cast into this tune, hearing the ineffable qualities that have compelled us to sustain it for nearly a millennium. Whether you're a choir, a string orchestra, or a combined ensemble, this arrangement of A Basque Carol will surely be a haunting and lovely addition to your next holiday program!.A Basque Carol (also known as Gabriel’s Message) holds a special place in Western music. The carol originates from Basque country around the 13th century, based on the Latin hymn, Angelus ad Virginem (likely of Franciscan origin). The tune quickly spread throughout Europe, finding popularity in Britain where it was even referenced in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “Playing so sweetly that the chamber rang; / and Angelus ad virginem he sang. . .â€.Interestingly, the melody we know and love today is derived from the original Basque version. In my view, this tune is a perfect example of melody-crafting. It is at once hauntingly beautiful, yet warm and joyous. Its contours are complex, dramatic, yet singable. I believe this melodic accessibility is the key to the song’s lasting popularity. I would also attribute A Basque Carol’s continued popularity to its elegant translation into English (by Sabine Baring-Gould, who rediscovered the original Basque tune). Translations often risk sounding unimaginative, coarse, and blunt. This translation is strikingly different. It was graced with an especially poetic translation including lines such as “his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame.â€I am very excited to offer a new perspective on this classic carol, joining the tradition of composers preserving and reimagining a priceless medieval melody. My first goal was to create a flowing, richly-textured, even cinematic string accompaniment for the choir. This approach was very much inspired by the dense, string-writing style of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. My second goal was to make the arrangement flexible enough to be performed with only choir, only strings, or (best of all) both ensembles combined. To further complement this approach, I’ve added an obligato line for a solo recorder (solo flute or violin work just as well). If you listen carefully, you will hear a quote from my other favorite holiday carol, Jesu Bambino.I hope you enjoy performing A Basque Carol. I especially hope that you sense the ancient magic cast into this tune, hearing the ineffable qualities that have compelled us to sustain it for nearly a millennium. Whether you’re a choir, a string orchestra, or a combined ensemble, this arrangement of A Basque Carol will surely be a haunting and lovely addition to your next holiday program!
SKU: CF.CAS147F
ISBN 9781491160862. UPC: 680160919468.
A Basque Carol (also known as Gabriel's Message) originated from the 13th or 14th century. This brilliantly crafted tune is at once hauntingly beautiful, yet warm and joyous. The lasting power of this song is in the craftsmanship of the melody. Its contours are complex and skillful, yet incredibly simple to sing. A Basque Carol's popularity can also be attributed to it's elegant translation into English by Sabine Baring-Gould. While translations often feel blunt or coarse, this one is especially poetic (his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame). In this orchestration, a flowing, cinematic style is combined with rich, thickly-textured string voicings inspired by composer Ralph Vaughn Williams. This graceful arrangement features an obbligato line on solo recorder (optional solo flute or violin). It may be performed by orchestra and soloist alone, or with Soprano and Alto choir (or S/A soloists). There is even a moment quoted from another favorite holiday carol, Jesu Bambino. A lovely addition to your next holiday program!.A Basque Carol (also known as Gabriel’s Message) originated from the 13th or 14th century. This brilliantly crafted tune is at once hauntingly beautiful, yet warm and joyous. The lasting power of this song is in the craftsmanship of the melody. Its contours are complex and skillful, yet incredibly simple to sing. A Basque Carol’s popularity can also be attributed to it’s elegant translation into English by Sabine Baring-Gould. While translations often feel blunt or coarse, this one is especially poetic (“his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flameâ€). In this orchestration, a flowing, cinematic style is combined with rich, thickly-textured string voicings inspired by composer Ralph Vaughn Williams. This graceful arrangement features an obbligato line on solo recorder (optional solo flute or violin). It may be performed by orchestra and soloist alone, or with Soprano and Alto choir (or S/A soloists). There is even a moment quoted from another favorite holiday carol, Jesu Bambino. A lovely addition to your next holiday program!
SKU: IG.OMW228
9 x 12 inches.
Contours II is one possible continuation of the journey through a dream-scape, that started with Contours I - concrete, flash-like contrasting images merging into shadows, vague allusions and fragments of archetypes ….
SKU: HL.1101611
UPC: 196288101024. 6.75x10.5x0.029 inches. Matthew 25:14-29, Proverbs 3:9.
This winsome anthem speaks like a sacred parable reminding us to be pure of heart as we share from our abundance. The sermon-in-song is set to engaging music with lovely melodic contours and harmonies that explore the richness of the choral tapestry.
SKU: PE.EP68578
ISBN 9790300759630. English.
Of Time and Passing (2016) is a cycle of three choral songs written specifically for the London-based ensemble, VOCES8, taking into consideration their versatilityand ability to beautifully intone a range of vocal colors with precision and grace.
The first song, I. Life, sets my translation of the poem A Vida by Brazilian poet Olavo Bilac (1865-1918), a poet I discovered while studying Brazilian Portuguese at the University of Michigan. I was drawn both to the simplicity of the text and to the possibilities of teasing out dual contrasting moods. In the beginning and end, this song explores a texture that is very much alive: wave-like contours, throbbing sounds, and plenty of flowing movement. Rising eighth-note motives in particular emphasize the fleetingness of life. But in the middle of the song, the listener is given a slowed-down atmosphere to savor life's beauty.
II. To Everything a Season capitalizes on VOCES8's ability to effectively interpret popular genres a cappella. This ancient text is taken from Ecclesiastes (dated around 300 B.C.) but I set it to a modern, rhythmically-regular and percussive pop-style idiom. Since popular music in whatever era is designedto appeal to a specific ?present time?, it is by its very nature ephemeral, and therefore seemed an apt metaphor to evoke the transitory nature of seasons.
III. Into Your Hands, confines the writing into no more than four parts, often with octave unisons.This creates a more direct and word-focused setting in which the Psalmist?s urgent words are placed at the forefront. Largely homophonic, this song is at times chorale-like, at times madrigal-like,finall y relinquishing it?s tension into peaceful rest, proclaiming ?You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God??
- Daniel Knaggs
SKU: HL.49045822
ISBN 9781540024749. UPC: 888680737764. 9.25x12.0x0.29 inches.
The Kreutzer Sonata was originally dedicated not to Rudolphe Kreutzer (who never performed it) but to George Bridgetower, a famed 18th-century Afro-European concert violinist. In an early draft, Beethoven jokingly labeled the piece in starkly racialized terms: Sonata Mulattica composed for the mulatto Brischdauer, big wild mulatto composer.Beethoven and Bridgetower performed the premiere, which was by all accounts a success, and even featuring some improvised embellishment by the violinist. While celebrating afterwards, the two quarreled about what Beethoven construed as Bridgetower's insult of a female acquaintance; the composer then revoked the original dedication, adding Kreutzer's name instead. The work gained acclaim, while Bridgetower's career languished; he eventually died in poverty.Bridgetower has been the subject of considerable research and speculation, most notably in poet Rita Dove's book, Sonata Mulattica. From our 21st-century vantage, considering Bridgetower's unique circumstance, we can only see him as an ambiguous figure who, in embodying difference, provoked inspiration, fantasy, desire, anger and, finally, erasure.My piece is a collection of imaginings about George Bridgetower. It is not programmatic, but it takes on an episodic character, assembled from contrasting fragments. The dance rhythms, recurring figures and gestural contours are intended to feature the embodied expertise and expressivity of the performers, who at times must access liminal sounds and execute complex synchronies. I am grateful to Jenny Koh and Shai Wosner for involving me in their beautiful, virtuosic music-making.
SKU: PR.114419720
ISBN 9781491134863. UPC: 680160685790.
In a musical style strongly influenced by (and occasionally parodying) American popular music, the subtitle “Baroque†may seem a puzzle at first. It is also the key to Pann’s approach in composing for multiple wind soloists and ensemble. With Bach’s Brandenburgs in the rear-view mirror, Pann has created a glorious hybrid of inspirations with intricate counterpoint, cadenzas, beautiful slow textures, and wild rides, creating a 16-minute, fast-slow-fast concerto grosso. The published piano reduction is fully practical for live performance.My Double Concerto (subtitled “Baroqueâ€) from 2018 posed an immediate challenge which gave me some real trepidation as a composer. The two solo instruments, Clarinet and Alto Saxophone, are quite varied in their timbral characteristics yet they have nearly identical ranges. I gave many hours of thought to solving this challenge and eventually settled on an obvious mission: make each instrument as independent from the other as possible. Explore opposite areas of each range simultaneously. Set very different contours against one another in the solo parts. These kinds of things.I. Bach in the Fifties sets the soloists up as competing crooners. I wanted to write a 1950s-style teen idol tune, complete with electric organ, and writing the music I imagined J.S. Bach might tend towards if he was writing for The Platters or Perry Como. This first movement also presents within it a traditional concerto-style cadenza for both soloists together.II. Desert Arias should transport the listener to an arid, barren land over which a mirage of canons emerge.III. Pronouncements is set in the style of a baroque concerto’s final movement. Nuance is forfeited on behalf of straight-ahead melodic dueling. Stravinsky lingers like a ghost behind this finale.
SKU: BT.EMBZ7055
Contorni, written in 1970, comes from the experimental period of Pál Károlyi (1934-2015). 'Outlines, contours' suggests the title, and accordingly the duo of bassoon and piano experience different modes of sounding the instruments, often putting extreme contrasts side by side in tempo and dynamics. The work is dedicated to József Vajda and Zoltán Kontra.
SKU: LM.P03551
ISBN 9790230335515.
SKU: MN.12-123A
UPC: 688670212314.
Th is work was commissioned for performance at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California. Though specifically designed for the Glatter-Götz / Rosales organ, it is appropriate for any large organ with at least three manuals and a generous combination action memory.
Visión escondida: During the quiet, ethereal introduction, the main theme is presented in short segments by the brass. The first main section reveals the theme intact in the solo organ. Successive thematic statements are embellished by the increasingly elaborate ornamentation. A development section leads to a series of increasingly dramatic fanfares. After a short organ cadenza, the Visión revelada presents the transformed main theme as an accompanied fugue. The dance-like secular nature is underscored by jazz-derived harmonies and insinuating contours, balanced by the scholarly contrapuntal devices.
SKU: CF.CM9039
ISBN 9780825866005. UPC: 798408066000. 6.875 X 10.5 inches. Key: G major.
David Eddleman has written a marvelously sensitive setting of this lovely Christina Rossetti poem. Originally an art song for solo voice, the solo line and melodic contours have been beautifully adapted to the a cappella choral medium. This is an elegant and touching choice for Festival and Concert programs.
SKU: HL.49045369
ISBN 9790001127059. UPC: 841886029682.
This concerto follows the structure of the Italian overture - fast, slow, fast. The first movement is a sonata form without development, based on three themes, rhythmical, oriental, waltz respectively. The second movement is characterized by an initial theme with Chopinesque-contours, followed by a more agitated theme and a choral-theme accompanied by a carillon in the treble register of the piano. The recapitulation includes a cadenza, Variation on the choral-theme. The finale is a rondo with a cheerful refrain twirling as a tarentella. Ist festive and dance-like episodes are combined with the perpetuum mobile of the refrain and its variations and the work is rounded off with a brillant, luminous coda. Naji Hakim.
SKU: KJ.SO109C
Written in the style of Haydn and Mozart, this composition features the keys of C and G Major, imitative motives and a variety of dynamics. Grade 1 1/2, 2:45.
SKU: HL.50575745
SKU: HL.1241610
UPC: 196288150664. 6.75x10.5x0.019 inches. Exodus 32:14, Hebrews 4:1-13, Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 4:8.
The Word becomes song in this attractive octavo based on Hebrews 4:1-13. The melody rises like a prayer with gentle contours and expressive patterns. Spiritual truths make this a great selection anytime, especially Lent.
SKU: LO.70-2181L
ISBN 9780787764982.
Each organ arrangement in this collection from Matthew McConnell combines two well-known hymn tunes. The tunes have been paired according to various factors: key relationships, melodic contours, textual associations, similarities between liturgical themes, and more. All pieces, when used creatively, can help reinforce the thematic message of a particular service, especially before or after the congregation sings a hymn from a given pairing.
SKU: AP.48146
UPC: 038081555737. English.
This high-energy piece opens with a brief, powerful introductory fanfare that leads to a rapid-paced set of melodic fragments, contours, and rhythms derived from the well-known Austrian hymn, before hurtling its way through a variety of meters, interspersed with percussive punctuation. (2:00).
SKU: HL.365817
UPC: 840126962086. 6.75x10.5x0.036 inches. Isaiah 49:13, Psalm 108:2, Romans 15:11.
From the opening bell tones in the piano, this anthem awakens the worshipping church to praise. Incorporating the early-American hymn tune PISGAH, this original piece celebrates the sacred call of music in proclaiming the joy of the Lord. The folklike character in the substance of the music is displayed in the melodic contours and rustic harmonic vocabulary. This is the day for singing and for sending alleluias soaring!
SKU: HL.1101608
UPC: 196288100997. 6.75x10.5x0.019 inches. Acts 2:3-8, John 14:16, Romans 8:26.
Flowing with graceful melodic contours and refined phrases, this expressive invocation to the Holy Spirit is ideal for Pentecost. An exquisite a cappella verse is a wonderful contrast to the unison and two-part sections that help in the learning of the anthem.
