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£35.00strange geometry
Descriptionstrange geometrywas commissioned by Morgan Griffiths and the Hammonds Saltaire Band for their performance at the Brass in Concert Championships of 2015.As a bit of a space/sci-fi geek, as well as a musician, two events during the summer of 2015 had a particular effect on me. The first was the tragic early death in a plane crash of the famous film composer James Horner. Horner's music, particularly in films like 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan', 'Avatar', 'Apollo 13' and even his debut in Roger Corman's 1980 budget film 'Battle Beyond the Stars', defined for a generation the sound of sci-fi at the cinema. Along with John Williams he created the vocabulary for those who wish to express other-worldly wonder in music and his inventive talent will be much missed in an industry where originality has become something of a dirty word in recent years.The second event was the epic flyby of Pluto by the NASA New Horizons spacecraft. There are many reasons to find this mission inspiring - for example, the scientists and engineers behind it created a craft that has travelled at 37,000 mph for nine years and three billion miles to arrive within seventy-two seconds of the predicted time for the flyby. That they achieved this with such accuracy is an outstanding tribute to humanity's ingenuity and insatiable curiosity. However, the most exciting aspect of the mission was the clear, high resolution pictures of this unthinkably remote and inhospitable world beamed back to mission control. The best previous image of Pluto was an indistinct fuzzy blob - suddenly we could see mountains made of ice, glaciers of methane and carbon monoxide and nitrogen fog - features previously unimagined on a world thought to be a slightly dull ball of cold rock. The BBC's venerable astronomy programme 'The Sky at Night' waxed lyrical about these newly discovered features, referring to "the surprising discoveries of mountains and strange geometry on the surface of this cold distant world".I like to think that Horner would have been as inspired as I have been by this real-life science story, and this piece uses some of the vocabulary of the sci-fi movie soundtrack in a tribute to the memory of a great musician and to the inspirational geeks at NASA who have boldly taken us where no-one has gone before.Note: This work comes with a B4 portrait score. Listen to a preview and follow the music below!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£34.95Chalk Farm No.2 (Brass Band - Score and Parts) - Gregson, Edward
Like so many of the best composers for brass band - Eric Ball, Wilfred Heaton, Elgar Howarth and Robert Simpson - Edward Gregson's youthful talents came to the fore in the Salvation Army. In 1975 Gregson was commissioned by the Chalk Farm Band of the Salvation Army to write a march for the centenary of the birth of the band's most long-serving bandmaster Alfred W Punchard, who conducted the band from 1894 to 1944. In 1909 the Salvation Army published a march called Chalk Farm featuring the old Army chorus 'March on, we shall win the day'.Gregson uses the same tune in his Chalk Farm No 2 march, but this is a symphonic march clearly to be played sitting down. He includes irregular bars of 5 and 7 beats as well as a tongue-in-cheek treatment of the tune, complete with bongos (in the march) and bi-tonality (in the trio). Chalk Farm No 2 imaginatively composed. Gregson's own main theme 'fits' the chorus as a counter-subject. The playful irreverence of the style has more in common with Wilfred Heaton's Praise or Glory, than the conventional Salvation Army March.Duration: 4.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£49.95Of Men and Mountains (Brass Band - Score only) - Gregson, Edward
Of Men and Mountains was commissioned by the Netherlands Brass Band Championships for their 10th Anniversary Contest, held in Drachten in December 1990.The title of the work and its genesis came about as a result of a train journey the composer took in July 1989 across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. The awe-inspiring journey through the Rocky Mountains, with its high peaks and shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds, with its canyons and ferocious rapids, made the composer understand a little more about the majesty of nature and the fragility of humanity. The eternal struggle between man and nature was personified in the building of this incredible railway, hence the title (after Blake).The work is dedicated to the memory of Eric Ball, who died shortly before the writing of the work was commenced.Of Men and Mountains is in one continuous movement and lasts about 17 mins. Its form is difficult to describe because of its motivic and accumulative nature, but it is essentially a symphonic tone poem in search of a theme, which eventually comes in its final and complete state in the majestic ending after an ever-increasing paced scherzo.Duration: 17.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£94.95Of Men and Mountains (Brass Band - Score and Parts) - Gregson, Edward
Of Men and Mountains was commissioned by the Netherlands Brass Band Championships for their 10th Anniversary Contest, held in Drachten in December 1990.The title of the work and its genesis came about as a result of a train journey the composer took in July 1989 across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. The awe-inspiring journey through the Rocky Mountains, with its high peaks and shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds, with its canyons and ferocious rapids, made the composer understand a little more about the majesty of nature and the fragility of humanity. The eternal struggle between man and nature was personified in the building of this incredible railway, hence the title (after Blake).The work is dedicated to the memory of Eric Ball, who died shortly before the writing of the work was commenced.Of Men and Mountains is in one continuous movement and lasts about 17 mins. Its form is difficult to describe because of its motivic and accumulative nature, but it is essentially a symphonic tone poem in search of a theme, which eventually comes in its final and complete state in the majestic ending after an ever-increasing paced scherzo.Duration: 17.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£59.95Voices of Youth (Brass Band - Score and Parts) - Gregson, Edward
The suite Voices of Youth is one of Gregson's earliest brass band compositions, written while he was still a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Voices of Youth was commissioned by the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain and was premiered by them under the baton of Geoffrey Brand.The work has three movements:Nobility of Youth (Duration: 4.00)Sadness and Tenderness (Duration: 2.30)Gaiety (Duration: 2.45)In Nobility of Youth there are the rich sonorities beloved of Salvationist composers such as Eric Ball and, particularly, Ray Steadman Allen, whose music he admired. The modal contour of the melodies here and at the climax of the slow movement Sadness and Tenderness reveal lessons well learned from Holst and Vaughan Williams. Gaiety is probably the most interesting amalgam of all. Beginning in the harmonic world of Gilbert Vinter - whose influence Gregson readily acknowledges at this time - the music is transformed into a bravura waltz of which Percy Grainger might have been proud. It then veers off via a contrapuntal episode of academic correctness, into a coda that takes us into more adventurous harmonic realms.Duration: 10.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£94.95Of Men and Mountains - Edward Gregson
Of Men and Mountains was commissioned by the Netherlands Brass Band Championships for their tenth anniversary contest in Drachten in December 1990. In July the previous year, Edward Gregson and his wife took the Trans Canadian Railway from Toronto to Vancouver. The journey through the Rocky Mountains was the starting point for Of Men and Mountains. Gregson writes that: 'its high peaks and shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds, its canyons and ferocious rapids made me understand a little more about the majesty of nature and the fragility of humanity. The eternal struggle between man and nature was personified in the building of this incredible railway... hence my title (after Blake).' The work is dedicated to the memory of Eric Ball, who died shortly before the writing of the work was commenced. Of Men and Mountains is in one continuous movement with a duration of approximately 17 minutes. Its form is difficult to describe because of its motivic and accumulative nature, but it is essentially a symphonic tone poem in search of a theme, which eventually comes in its final and complete state in the majestic ending after an ever-increasing paced scherzo. Of Men and Mountains has been selected as the test pieces for the 2023 National Brass Championships of Great Britain at the Albert Hall.
Estimated dispatch 5-14 working days
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£12.00Of Men and Mountains (Brass Band Study Score)
Of Men and Mountains was commissioned by the Netherlands Brass Band Championships for their 10th Anniversary Contest, held in Drachten in December 1990.The title of the work and its genesis came about as a result of a train journey the composer took in July 1989 across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. The awe-inspiring journey through the Rocky Mountains, with its high peaks and shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds, with its canyons and ferocious rapids, made the composer understand a little more about the majesty of nature and the fragility of humanity. The eternal struggle between man and nature was personified in the building of this incredible railway, hence the title (after Blake).The work is dedicated to the memory of Eric Ball, who died shortly before the writing of the work commenced.Of Men and Mountains is in one continuous movement and lasts about 17 mins. Its form is difficult to describe because of its motivic and accumulative nature, but it is essentially a symphonic tone poem in search of a theme, which eventually comes in its final and complete state in the majestic ending after an ever-increasing paced scherzo.Duration: 17.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£49.95Of Men and Mountains (Brass Band - Score Only)
Of Men and Mountains was commissioned by the Netherlands Brass Band Championships for their 10th Anniversary Contest, held in Drachten in December 1990.The title of the work and its genesis came about as a result of a train journey the composer took in July 1989 across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. The awe-inspiring journey through the Rocky Mountains, with its high peaks and shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds, with its canyons and ferocious rapids, made the composer understand a little more about the majesty of nature and the fragility of humanity. The eternal struggle between man and nature was personified in the building of this incredible railway, hence the title (after Blake).The work is dedicated to the memory of Eric Ball, who died shortly before the writing of the work commenced.Of Men and Mountains is in one continuous movement and lasts about 17 mins. Its form is difficult to describe because of its motivic and accumulative nature, but it is essentially a symphonic tone poem in search of a theme, which eventually comes in its final and complete state in the majestic ending after an ever-increasing paced scherzo.Duration: 17.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£94.95Of Men and Mountains (Brass Band - Score and Parts)
Of Men and Mountains was commissioned by the Netherlands Brass Band Championships for their 10th Anniversary Contest, held in Drachten in December 1990.The title of the work and its genesis came about as a result of a train journey the composer took in July 1989 across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. The awe-inspiring journey through the Rocky Mountains, with its high peaks and shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds, with its canyons and ferocious rapids, made the composer understand a little more about the majesty of nature and the fragility of humanity. The eternal struggle between man and nature was personified in the building of this incredible railway, hence the title (after Blake).The work is dedicated to the memory of Eric Ball, who died shortly before the writing of the work commenced.Of Men and Mountains is in one continuous movement and lasts about 17 mins. Its form is difficult to describe because of its motivic and accumulative nature, but it is essentially a symphonic tone poem in search of a theme, which eventually comes in its final and complete state in the majestic ending after an ever-increasing paced scherzo.Duration: 17.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£103.00
Fest - Polonaise - Johan Svendsen - Kjell Olav Martinsen
Johan Svendsen (1840 - 1911) was the first great Norwegian symphonic composer, as well as one of the leading conductors of his time. Next to Edv. Grieg, he was the most prominent figure in Norwegian music life at the end of the 1800's. Although he came from humble beginnings in Chistiania (now Oslo), he was to become a cosmopolitan who felt at home all over Europa. Svendsen spent most of his adult life abroad, living in Copenhagen for 25 years as maestro for the Royal Theatre Orchestra. Nonetheless he retained contact with Norway troughout these years and was a frequent and popular guest in his native country. He wrote his Festival Polonaise for a ball in 1873. This polonaise in a big ABA style
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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