5 Great Pieces

SKU: HL.14030351

ISBN 9780853605485. UPC: 884088434175. 8.5x11.75 inches.

Commissioned by Richard Deering with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain and first performed by him in October 1982 in Amsterdam. The title is the same as the Schoenberg ones of 1911 and like those pieces my title is something of an understatement. They are not musically or technically undemanding as the title may perhaps suggest. In my case these pieces were in a sense sketches for my larger scale Piano Sonata of the following year. Each piece has its own essential character, but all of them are linked in the use of common pitch material. There is more than a hint of parody in the mood of the music.

SKU: GI.G-10177

ISBN 9781622775224.

Listening Excerpts to Develop Band Musicianship is a resource that can sit near your workstation for ease and speed. I feel listening has been a great benefit to my students. I have spent a lot of time attempting to be more efficient, and I want to share the fruits of my labor with others. Incorporate listening excerpts into your teaching, and you and your students will benefit greatly. —Jim Childers Providing great listening models for band students can be an incredibly efficient and effective way to convey musical concepts—provided directors have a library of well-organized recordings that catalog everything from expressive styles (“Heroic”) to technical issues (“Double-Tonguing”). With this essential book, Jim Childers does the hard work of classifying the top wind band recordings to provide efficient excerpts for just the right concept. Imagine teaching students to do a lifting release. If they heard members of “The President’s Own” in one of their amazing recordings, students can be enlightened and inspired. With added coaching from the director, students will have a shortened trip to improved performance. In this resource, Childers collects hundreds of quality listening excerpts into tables and categorizes them both by instrumentation and by characteristics such as expressive elements, articulations, tempo, and more. This book helps directors be efficient in using small, but effective, listening to develop students’ musicianship—and is particularly helpful in a distance learning environment. When considering how much time directors spend in rehearsals trying to describe and redefine the musical effects they desire, words and their connotative meanings often fall short and fail to produce what a director hopes to hear. But providing students the opportunity to listen to great bands playing those desired elements from within great pieces of music can, and will, improve musicianship and inspire students! Jim Childers is Director of Bands at Marion (IL) Jr. High School, where he directs all band activities in grades six through eight. He has directed bands since 1991, at Marion Jr. High School since 2002 as well as Highland High School and Mt. Vernon Township High School. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, studying trombone with Dr. Robert Weiss. He has guest conducted many camps, including ISYM at the University of Illinois, and has been invited to present at several conferences, including The Midwest Clinic.

SKU: CF.H84

ISBN 9781491165539. UPC: 680160924530.

Marcel Tournier (1879–1951) was one of the most important harpist/composers in the history of the harp. Over his long career, he added a significant catalogue of very beautiful works to the harp repertoire. Many of his solo works, almost one hundred, have been consistently in print since they were first published. But in recent years harpist Carl Swanson has discovered a treasure trove of pieces by Tournier heretofore unknown and unpublished. These include the Déchiffrages in this edition, as well as songs set for voice, harp, and string quartet, and ensemble arrangements of some of his most beloved works.All of the works that Carl Swanson found were in manuscript only. With the help of the great harpist Catherine Michel, he has put these pieces into playable form, and they are being published for the very first time. He and Catherine often had to re-notate passages to show clearly how they could be played, adding fingerings and musical nuances, tempos, pedals, and pedal diagrams.Tournier wrote these pieces when he was in his 20s, and before he became the impressionistic composer those familiar with his work know so well. They are written in the late nineteenth-century romantic style that was being taught at that time at the Paris Conservatory. They are beautiful short, intermediate level pieces by a first rate composer, and add much needed repertoire to that level of playing.
Marcel Tournier (1879–1951) was one of the most important harpist/composers in the history of the harp. He graduated from the Paris Conservatory with a first prize in harp in 1899. He also studied composition there and won a second prize in the prestigious Prix de Rome competition, as well as a first prize in the Rossini competition, another major composition competition of the day. From 1912 to 1948 he taught the harp class at the Paris Conservatory. But composition, and almost entirely, composition for the harp, was the main focus of his life. His published works, including many works for solo harp, a few for harp and other instruments, and several songs, number around one hundred pieces.In 2019, while researching Tournier for my edition MARCEL TOURNIER: 10 Pieces for Solo Harp, I discovered that there was a significant list of pieces by this composer that had never been published and were not included on any inventory of his music. Principal on this list were his déchiffrages (pronounced day-she-frahge, like the second syllable in the word garage).The word déchiffrage means sight-reading exercise, and that was their original purpose. Tournier numbered and dated these pieces, with dates ranging from 1900 to 1910, indicating that they were in all likelihood written for Alphonse Hasselmans’ class at the Paris Conservatory. Tournier was probably told how long to make each one, and how difficult. They range in length from two to four pages, with only one in the whole series extending to five, and from thirty to fifty-five measures, with only one extending to eight-five. The level of difficulty for the whole series is intermediate, with some at the easier end, and others at the middle or upper end.We don’t know if they were intended to test students trying to enter the harp class, or if they were used to test students in the class as they played their exams. The fact that they were never published means that students had to not only sight read them, but sight read them in manuscript form!I worked from digital images of the original manuscripts, which are in the private music library of a harpist in France. She had twenty-seven of these pieces, and this edition is the second in a series of three that will publish, for the first time, all of the ones that I have found thus far. The manuscripts themselves consist of little more than notes on the page: no pedals written in, no fingerings, few if any musical nuances and tempo markings, and no clear indication as to which hand plays which notes. These would have been difficult to sight read indeed! My collaborator Catherine Michel and I added musical nuances, fingerings, pedals and pedal diagrams, and tempo indications to put them into their current condition.At the time these were written, Tournier would have been in his twenties, having just graduated from the harp class himself (1899), and might still have been in the composition class. These are the earliest known pieces that he wrote, and they were written at the very beginning of a cultural revolution and upheaval in Paris that was to completely and profoundly alter musical composition. Tournier himself would eventually be caught up in this new way of composing. But not yet.All of the déchiffrages are written in the late romantic style that was being taught at that time at the Paris Conservatory. Each one is built on a clear musical idea, and the variety over the whole series makes them wonderful to listen to as well as to learn. They are also great technical lessons for intermediate level players.The obvious question is: Why didn’t Tournier publish these pieces, and why didn’t he list them on his own inventory of his music? Actually, four of them were published, with small changes, as his collection Four Preludes, Op. 16. These came from the ones that will be in volume three of this series from Carl Fischer. His first large piece, Theme and Variations, was published in 1908, and his two best known and frequently played pieces, Féerie and Au Matin, followed in 1912 and 1913 respectively. We can only speculate because there is so much still unknown about Tournier and about these unpublished pieces. He may have looked at them, fresh out of school as he was, as simply a way to make some quick money. The first several pieces that he did publish are much longer than any of the déchiffrages. So it could be that, because of their shorter length, as well as the earlier musical style that he was moving away from, he chose not to publish any more of them. We may never know the full story. But all these years later, more than a century after they were composed, we can listen to them for their own merits, and not measured against whatever else was going on at the time. The numbers on these pieces are the ones that Tournier assigned to them, and the gaps between some of the numbers suggest that there are perhaps thirty or more of these pieces still to be found, if they still exist. They will, in all likelihood, be found, as these were, in private collections of harp music, not in institutional libraries. We can only hope that more of them will be located in years to come.—Carl SwansonGlossary of French Musical TermsTournier was very precise about how he wanted his pieces played, and carefully communicated this with many musical indications. He used standard Italian words, but also used French words and phrases, and occasionally mixed both together. It is extremely important to observe and understand everything that he put on the page.Here is a list of the French words and phrases found in the pieces in this edition, with their translation.bien chanté well sung, melodiousdécidé firm, resolutediminu peu à peu becoming softer little by littleen diminuant becoming softeren riten. slowing downen se perdant dying awayGaiement gayly, lightlygracieusement gracefully, elegantlyLéger light, quickLent slowmarquez le chant emphasize the melodyModéré at a moderate tempopeu à peu animé more lively, little by littleplus lent slowerRetenu held backsans lenteur without slownesssans retinir without slowing downsec drily, abruptlysoutenu sustained, heldtrès arpegé very arpeggiatedTrès Modéré Very moderate tempoTrès peu retenu slightly held backTrès soutenu very sustainedun peu retenu slightly held back.

SKU: CF.O5421

ISBN 9780825833168. UPC: 798408033163. 9 X 12 inches.

Andy Balent and Joe Compello have done it again. Following the great success of their collaboration on Ensembles Sound Spectacular, Grade Two, they created an outstanding folio for the Grade One Band. This very easy collection of original pieces and arrangements for beginning band contains music that is enjoyable and exciting for young players and can also be used to aid in the teaching of basic fundamentals of music and band performance. All pieces are correlated with Book One of the Sounds Spectacular Band Course and are designed to sound great with an imbalanced instrumentation or larger, fully provided ensembles. They will also be a great supplement to any band method you are currently using. This folio is written for the basic instrumentation that is common to most beginning bands. There is only one flute, clarinet and trumpet part and the low instrument parts are all together. As long as all parts are included, even the smallest ensemble will make a very solid sound at this level. First Concert Folio contains the following selections: Ain't Gonna Rain No More, Aura Lee, Captain Andy, Chant For Band, Jingle Bells, London Bridge is Rockin' Down, The Mouse in the Clock, O Come Little Children, Old Mac Donald's Band, The Olympians, The Sailor and the Bear, Skip To My Lou, The Old Man Plays Trumpet, The Victors Wolfgang in the Percussion Box.