https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SYROYYYOc8


?At Last? was composed by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for the musical ?Sun Valley Serenade? in 1941. It was recorded by Glenn Miller and his orchestra, becoming a chart hit in 1942, and in 1960 by Etta James, who was subsequently inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The song is a frequent wedding favourite for quartets.

Why chose my arrangement?

This is a song from my gig repertoire, and as such I have spent a long time on the piano part to make sure that it lies under the fingers. I have assigned the opening to the piano as it is tricky, even for very experienced violin players, and I shortened the introduction to make it more appropriate for concerts, wedding venues and pub gigs. I have also made the piano notation slightly smaller so that it falls onto two pages. It?s very important for a live performance to be able to see it easily. And unlike some sheet music that you can buy, I make sure the treble and bass clefs are easy to read?.very few horrible ledger lines!

The violin part has difficult rhythms but I enclose a midi version to help you. (Watch the video) Having said that, although the pianist needs to hold a steady pulse, the violin part can be extremely varied and you can play around with the tune as much as you like. I have included a cadenza that my daughter sings in live performances, but feel free to change it, or miss it out altogether.

I have also included an Easy Violin version for your pupils, or as a way in to working on the more difficult version.

My tips for the performance.

The first piano chord is tricky, but works if you do a glissando in the left hand, and land on the A on the first beat of the bar. I tried many different spacings of the chord but this is the one that sounded best. I have largely written a quaver accompaniment throughout the song, but sometimes I hint at it rather than playing it literally. There are some fingerings that I have found helpful, but feel free to change them, of course! The same goes for my bowing. Take as many bows as you need to feel comfortable.

This arrangement was modified in its edition and violin indications. A very clean piano part was written. Very good edition of the entire score.

The M�ditation is an instrumental entr'acte performed between the scenes of Act II in the opera Tha�s. In the first scene of Act II, Athana�l, a Cenobite monk, confronts Tha�s, a beautiful and hedonistic courtesan and devot�e of Venus, and attempts to persuade her to leave her life of luxury and pleasure and find salvation through God. It is during a time of reflection following the encounter that the M�ditation is played by the orchestra. In the second scene of Act II, following the M�ditation, Tha�s tells Athana�l that she will follow him to the desert.

The piece is in D major and is approximately five minutes long (although there are a number of interpretations that stretch the piece to over six minutes). Massenet may also have written the piece with religious intentions; the tempo marking is Andante religioso, signifying his intention that it should be played religiously (which could mean either strictly in the tempo or literally with religiously-founded emotion) and at walking tempo, or around 60 BPM. The piece opens with a short introduction, with the solo violin quickly entering with the motif. After the violin plays the melody twice, the piece goes into a section marked animato, gradually becoming more and more passionate (Massenet wrote poco a poco appassionato). The climax is reached at a place marked poco piu appassionato (a little more passion) and is then followed by a short cadenza-like passage from the soloist and returns to the main theme. After the theme is played twice, the soloist joins the piano while playing harmonics on the upper register as the piano quietly play below the solo line.

When Ligeti taught composition at the University of Stockholm in the 1960s, he met his famous Swedish fellow composer Hilding Rosenberg (1892-1985). Ligeti wrote this musical greeting on the occasion of Rosenberg's 90th birthday.
The little piece is easy to play, composed in an extremely instrument-related manner and sounds really good. It shows that Ligeti, like Bach, Schumann and Bartok, was able to write easily playable and at the same time tonally convincing music in his personal style. Whether at an audition in a music school class or (as an encore) at a concert, it is impossible to resist the immediate charm of this composition.