Thisnew collection of Thanksgiving and Harvest hymns contains all your favorites,or at least, most of them. It?s probably all you?ll ever need for thanksgivingand harvest festivals and the arrangements can be used for virtually anycombination of stringed instruments. This is an essential title for any stringlibrary or for any string ensembles that are called upon to provide music forschools, Thanksgiving events or churches.

Thearrangements can be used with string quartet, string quintet or string ensembleor performed as solo pieces. There?s also an optional but useful simplifiedkeyboard part intended for less experienced keyboard players. The piano parttoo means that you can use the arrangements as solos, duets or trios. Thesearrangements are intended either as stand-alone pieces that could be used asinterludes in a service, or they could be used to accompany solo, choral orcongregational singing. To make the music accessible to less experienced stringplayers, the range of the notes has been kept fairly low so that many of thearrangements can be played in first position. However, to produce a brighterand richer sound, a few of the more experienced violinists could play an octavehigher. You could also use the arrangements as flute or oboe solo pieces, with thewind instrument playing the 1st violin part. Each hymn has a four-staff scoreand parts are provided for Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello and optional Doublebass. The scores and all the parts are contained in a single PDF file. Becausestring-friendly keys are used, these arrangements are NOT compatible with thosein the wind collection of the same name.

Thefollowing 25 hymns are included: AllCreatures of our God and King (Lasst uns Erfreuen); As the Sun doth Daily Rise(Innocents); All Things Bright and Beautiful (Bright and Beautiful); Bringingin the Sheaves (Sowing in the Morning); Come Ye Thankful People Come (StGeorge?s Windsor); Fair Waved the Golden Corn (Holyrood); Fill your Hearts withJoy and Gladness (Ode to Joy); For the Beauty of the Earth (Dix); For theFruits of His Creation (Ar Hyd y Nos); Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken(Austrian Hymn); Immortal, Invisible (St Denio); Let all Things now Living (AshGrove); Let us with a Gladsome Mind (Monkland); Now Thank we all Our God (Nundanket); Praise and Thanksgiving (Bunessan); Praise God for the Harvest(Stowey); Praise my Soul the King of Heaven (Lauda anima); Praise to the Lordthe Almighty (Lob den herren); Rejoice the Lord is King (Darwall?s 148th);Sing to the Lord of Harvest (Wie lieblich ist der maien); This is my Father?s World(Terra Beata); To thee, O Lord, our Hearts we Raise (Golden Sheaves); We GatherTogether (Kremser); We Plough the Fields and Scatter (Wir pfl�gen) and PraiseGod from whom all Blessings Flow (Old Hundredth)

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I have made an arrangement for String Quartet and hope to make more for different combinations of instruments and piano in the future.

As usual my arrangement can be played by professionals for concerts, weddings and events but also tackled by young people. The key is the original one, D minor, which is easy for strings, and younger players can make use of open strings and take as many bows as they need. I have included some bowing as a guide. Most of the double stopping includes one open string but less experienced players can leave out one of the notes where necessary, especially of it is doubled by one of the other players. I have included some 'commas' in this arrangement and recommend recovering the bow and watching the leader like a hawk!

The long ?piano? sections will need lots of crescendo and decrescendo markings to sound effective. I put down some ideas, but feel free to experiment. The main thing is that they grow and decay again, to keep up the tension. Without that movement, those soft passages might sound boring, albeit the chords are gorgeous.

I have included a crescendo in the penultimate bar before each new dynamic, but ideally a long crescendo is needed between each new dynamic marking. The texture becomes gradually thicker, which will help, but I am looking forward to Capriccio Quartet recording this one as they are so good at building up excitement.

There must be a great deal of drama at letters D and O. After a massive increase in dynamic I am hoping for a ?breath? at the comma, and a very sudden softness for the chords that follow. I also like harmonics for the viola at bars 21-22, giving way to a natural note on the fourth beat of 22. I would like the harmonic in viola to be almost imperceptible as the piece closes out. I haven?t marked it as such, and I couldn?t write a ?simile? on the page without clashes of staves or an extra page. I intended it to be a harmonic to the end though.

Please send me any recordings you make because I love to hear people playing my arrangements, even if it is a phone recording, and especially younger players! I am on facebook and I have a Youtube Channel too. Helen Marple-Horvat Songwriter, Arranger, Composer.