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About the Music
brian balmages (b. 1975)
Music for Five Brass (2010)
Trumpeter, conductor, and composer Brian Balmages
received his bachelor’s degree at James Madison University in
Virginia and his master’s degree at the University of Miami in
Florida. He has composed widely for every kind of ensemble,
emphasizing brass instruments, and for every level from grade
school bands to many of the nation’s leading orchestras. He is
currently director of instrumental publications for FJH Music
Company, Inc., in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Music for Five Brass
was commissioned and premiered in 2010 by the Boston
Brass. The outer movements focus on rhythmic drive, as
indicated by their titles Rhythm and Dance, while the middle
movement, Prayer, is thoughtful and calmly sustained.
About the Music
johann sebastian bach (1685–1750)
Contrapunctus IX from The Art of Fugue
(ca. 1748–49)
Arranged by Ralph Sauer
The work known to us as Die Kunst der Fuge (“The Art of
Fugue”) was left incomplete at Bach’s death in 1750—the
last monument of a monumental musical life. It has been
surrounded for centuries by legends and misunderstandings,
though none of these detract from its breathtaking
demonstration of the composer’s astonishing mastery of
the materials of music. Evidently planned as a systematic
demonstration of all the various possibilities of fugal writing
through the use of a single theme that appears, the work contains fugues on a single subject,
as well as others on two and three subjects, one of which is always the main theme. Finally,
there is an incomplete fugue, planned to contain no fewer than four different fugal subjects,
each developed by itself, then combined; the third of these is the musical translation of the
composer’s own name (B-A-C-H, according to German notational practice, results in the
pitches B-flat, A, C, B-natural).
Bach began work on the composition in the mid-1740s and worked on the revision of the
piece for some years. Its publication was well underway by the end of 1749, but it had not
been finished at the time of his death the following July. The Art of Fugue was published
posthumously by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was not privy to his father’s final
intentions for the work. Contrapunctus IX is among the best known of the entire series, a
double fugue beginning with a lively running subject; the main subject appears as a cantus
firmus in long notes.
johann sebastian bach
Sarabande and Bourrée from Partita No. 1
in B Minor, BWV 1002 (1720)
Arranged by Donald Rauscher
This music was composed as part of Bach’s set of six
sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin. They are
among the most extraordinary works ever written for that
severely restricted medium in that they manage to suggest
combinations of melodic lines and contrapuntal complexities
that cannot actually be sustained on the instrument. But by a
clever manipulation of the violin’s technique, the composer
and player can fool the listener’s ear into resolving what is
basically a single line into a full contrapuntal texture. Bach copied out the six works (BWV
1001–1006) into one of his most beautiful manuscripts in the year 1720. But beyond that
simple fact, we know virtually nothing of their composition or purpose.
The Partita in B minor, BWV 1002, is, like the other two partitas, freer in character than the
three sonatas; like them it is composed entirely of dance movements. In this particular case
Bach pays homage to the art of variation by following each of the dances with a “double,” a
variation on the preceding movement. The term double comes from the traditional variation
technique that progressively doubles the level of activity from one variation to the next by
composing each successive section in the next smaller note value, such as eighth notes
following quarters, sixteenth notes following eighths, and so on. Thus, each pair, dance and
double, reveals Bach’s masterly skill at instilling life into the formal dance patterns, especially
with the self imposed restriction of a single violin line, and his genius at reworking the basic
material at a still higher level of energy.
About the Music
tomaso albinoni (1671–1750) Sonata Saint Mark (c. 1712)
Arranged by David Hickman
Like many popular Baroque works, this sonata is arranged
from an earlier composition, in this case Albinoni’s Chamber
Sonata in B-flat, Op. 6, No. 11. Albinoni is not likely to have
objected to this procedure since there was, in his day, no
concept of a repertory of masterpieces that would be
heard again and again in concerts. Audiences wanted novelty
at all costs, composers frequently rearranged works into
different media in order to get more mileage out of music
already on hand, and soloists were not bashful about taking a
piece written for another instrument and making it over to their own.
Albinoni’s output is said to have included some 80 operas and many sets of concertos and
sonatas. The nickname “San Marco” is an obvious reference to the main basilica in Albinoni’s
native city, but it is not clear whether this was bestowed by the composer or an arranger.
The layout of the piece is that of a sonata da chiesa, a “church sonata,” in four movements
alternating slow, fast, slow, and fast in tempos. This gives the composer and the performer
plenty of opportunity to display both sweet lyrical invention and lively virtuosity.
anthony dilorenzo (b. 1967)
Fire Dance (1996)
Anthony DiLorenzo is an Emmy Award–winning composer,
a trumpeter, and founding member of the Center City Brass
Quintet, for whom he composed Fire Dance in 1996 with the
intention of challenging his colleagues while writing a piece
they found fun to play. Fire Dance almost instantly upon
publication became a favorite showpiece for brass ensembles
because of its nonstop energy and drive, coupled with high
technical demands from the players.
richard strauss (1864–1949)
Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare (1924)
Every year in Vienna, on the night before Ash Wednesday, the
Fasching (“Carnival”) ends with a Faschingsdienstag Ball—a
“Shrove Tuesday Ball” at the opera house. This event has
traditionally been one of the highlights of the social calendar
in Vienna. In 1924, Strauss composed a three-minute fanfare
to inaugurate the ball, a powerful and festive work for large
brass ensemble consisting of six trumpets, eight horns, six
trombones, two tubas, and two sets of timpani.
About the Music
peter warlock (1894–1930)
Capriol Suite (1926)
Arranged by Jay Lichtmann
Brilliant but unstable, the tragically short-lived composer
Peter Warlock was gifted both as a writer of words and as a
writer of music. Under his own name, Philip Heseltine, he
wrote studies of music, including Frederick Delius (1923),
The English Ayre (1926), and Carlo Gesualdo: Musician and
Murderer (1926), the latter co authored with Cecil Gray.
He also edited a great deal of early music, making available
a large quantity of material that was known only to a handful
of musical antiquarians. As a composer (using the pen name
Peter Warlock), he was chiefly renowned for his songs, in which his literary and musical
sensibilities combined to produce miniature works of sensitive artistry.
One of his scholarly publications was the preface to an English translation of the 1588
manual of what we would call “ballroom dancing,” Orchésographie, by Thoinot Arbeau
(the pseudonym of Jehan Tabourot). The volume makes plain how greatly any sort of
social life in the 16th century was bound up with an ability to dance, but most important
is the fact that Arbeau provides actual dance tunes to go with the patterns of steps he
describes. It is these tunes that make up the Capriol Suite. Some of these come down only
as unharmonized melodies, others as tunes with a complete four part harmonization.
Of these, the best known is the pavanne in Warlock’s suite, a love song called “Belle qui
tient ma vie,” which translates to “Fair one, who holds my heart captive with your eyes.”
Warlock’s arrangements in the Capriol Suite were originally cast for strings alone in the
1926 version, but an arrangement for brass instruments serves them very well. Though
they surely differ from the way a Renaissance dance band would have played these tunes,
they capture the spirit of each of the characteristic dance styles with respect and affection.
giovanni gabrieli (ca. 1554–1612)
Canzon duodecimi toni (1597)
Giovanni Gabrieli was born in Venice between 1553 and
1556 and died there in August of 1612. The canzona to be
performed here is “in the 12th mode,” scored for unspecified
instruments, though modern performances usually employ
the brass family, divided into two choirs of five parts each. In
1597, Giovanni Gabrieli published a large collection entitled
Symphoniae sacrae (Sacred symphonies), consisting of over 40
sacred motets and 16 instrumental works, nearly all planned
for two or more divided choirs. The instrumental works were
called canzoni, a shortened form of the full term canzone
da sonar. This literally means a song, or chanson, to be
played on instruments. Some 20 years earlier, the publication of French chansons arranged
as instrumental pieces had encouraged the development of purely instrumental music
conceived in the same style, consisting of various contrasting sections arranged to produce a
satisfying musical balance.
About the Music
george frideric handel (1685–1759)
Overture to Music for the Royal Fireworks (1748)
Arranged by Ralph Sauer
The autumn of 1748 saw the end of the long and grinding
European war known as the “War of the Austrian Succession,”
which had been running over much of Europe for eight years.
The signing of a peace treaty in Aix-la-Chapelle on October
18, 1748, after so many years of hardship and bloodshed,
was hailed as an achievement worthy of the most splendid
celebration. A great public display of fireworks in London’s
Green Park was announced for April 1749. The king agreed
music should accompany the festivities, but with the
stipulation that it should be a music of “warlike instruments,” meaning wind and percussion,
the types of instruments that might be part of a military band.
The overture is far and away the biggest movement of the Music for the Royal Fireworks.
Conceived in the mold of the French overture—with a slow introduction in crisp dotted
rhythms, followed by a faster, lightly fugal main section—it is superbly conceived for outdoor
performance. The faster section of the overture does not come from the early sketches
but seems to have been conceived specifically for this piece. Handel carefully designed
the thematic material to be played by the brass instruments, which, in his day, could play
chromatic notes only with great difficulty and in poor tune. The layout of the themes, with
plenty of opportunity for triple antiphonal echoes between the different instrumental choirs,
also suggests that they were conceived for this unusual ensemble.
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samuel scheidt (1587–1654)
Galliard battaglia (ca. 1621)
Arranged by Raymond Mase
Born in Halle, Samuel Scheidt is considered one of the leading
composers of the early German Baroque; best known for
keyboard works contained in Tabulatura nova of 1624, he also
published several volumes of instrumental chamber music
and a substantial output of sacred choral works. Like his
great contemporaries Heinrich Schütz and Johann Hermann
Schein, his work was strongly affected by the ravages of
the Thirty Years’ War, which was essentially fought between
Europe’s Catholics and Protestants from 1618 to 1648, though
it was far more complicated than that simple description might suggest. Certainly it brought
major devastation to large musical organizations, especially church choirs, all over Europe.
Halle was occupied by the Swedes from 1625 to 1631, when Scheidt was the Kapellmeister of
the town. Much of his musical establishment was decimated during the worst stages of the
war.
The source of the themes in the Galliard battaglia is a very popular French chanson by
Clément Janequin (c. 1495–1558) entitled La Guerre (The War). This chanson calls for the
four singing voices to make a lot of onomatopoeic sounds ranging from trumpet calls to
cannon blasts, interspersed with brief verbal directions calling the participants to charge,
and declaring in the end, “Victory!” The special effects intrigued performers, and the work
was reprinted widely, while a number of composers transcribed it for various instruments
from duets to much larger ensemble, and even settings of the Mass. Many of the versions
derived from the piece were dances in various styles like this galliard—a vigorous court dance
popular throughout the century and into the next, for which composers chose several specific
themes from the original chanson to suggest the sounds of battle.
© Steven Ledbetter, stevenledbetter.com