SKU: CF.CPS75

ISBN 9780825867477. UPC: 798408067472. 9 X 12 inches. Key: Bb major.

Spirits Bright was inspired by the idea that the holiday season, while a time of joy and peace, may also be a time of reflection on and acknowledgement of the year's passing. The work is an expression of the nostalgia and wistfulness we experience during the holidays; a time when we remember friends and family, both present and past. Spirits Bright evokes the bittersweet warmth of a fire in the fireplace, chestnuts roasting, snow falling gently, and jingle bells.

SKU: AY.FRD37

ISBN 9790302114659.

John La Montaine's Twelve Relationships for Piano Solo consists of twelve short canons: Bold and Plain, Teasing, Plaintive, Bittersweet, Wayward, Saucy, Entreating, Piquant, Brooding, Spirited and Jubilant. It was originally composed in 1965. A canon is the strictest form of composition, in which two or more parts take up in succession exactly the same musical subject. Each of the canons in Twelve Relationships is at a different interval. That is, the second entrance of the subject begins on a different note in each canon, and that note is always different from the first entrance. Twelve different intervals are utilized in the twelve canons. Each of these canons is strict in its succession of intervals from the first note to the last. The first canon is at the octave and therefore in one and the same key. All of the others at different intervals, since they are strict, are simultaneously in two different keys. There is no other known set of canons so composed. The title Twelve Relationships may be understood in two senses. One refers to the form, the intervallic relationships mentioned above. The other refers to the content, that is, to the psychological relationships that are implied by the titles of the individual canons and which form the musical substance of the pieces. Jocelyn Mackey (Pan Pipes, music critic): Twelve Relationships contains twelve two-part canons with titles like, Plaintive, Sprightly, Saucy, Brooding. The first, Bold and Plain, is composed with imitation at the fifth, while a different interval is used in each of the other eleven. Just as the Well-Tempered Clavier contains preludes in each possible key, each possible interval of imitation is used in this set of canons. Amazing contrapuntal skill..

SKU: PR.140401330

ISBN 9781491134412. UPC: 680160684939.

Nathaniel Dett was among America’s leading composers in the early 20th century, and MAGNOLIA SUITE is a beautiful example of his rich, hybrid style. Deeply inspired by the music and mission of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Dett’s piano music springs from the late Romantic traditions of florid texture and embellishment, along with programmatic titles and raw emotion. It is notable for melody writing inspired by and paraphrasing African-American song. The 18-minute MAGNOLIA SUITE contains five movements, any of which may also be performed separately. This edition by Lara Downes provides a clean, new engraving that corrects the many errors and unclear indications appearing in the historical printing.
Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in a place that was built on freedom. The little village of Drummondville, Ontario was founded by enslaved Africans – Dett’s ancestors among them – who traveled the Underground Railroad out of the American South into Canada. Their journey brought them to a safe haven, a place where fortunes and futures could be transformed in the span of one generation, to lives full of new possibilities. You could call it “the place where the rainbow ends,” which is the title of the last movement of Dett’s Magnolia Suite.When Dett wrote these pieces, he was a young teacher at Lane College in Tennessee, a historically Black college that had been founded in 1882, the year of his birth. A place built on freedom, with the purpose of educating newly-emancipated slaves – a place designed to nurture the blossoming of ideas, the vibrant flowering of minds set free. This music is inspired by the gorgeous splendor of the magnolia blooms on that college campus, and also by the shared histories, experiences, and aspirations of the community that Dett found there.These five pieces pay affectionate tribute to lineage and legacy. They express gratitude for the bittersweet beauties of the present; nostalgia for the past (a bit romanticized, as the past always is); and an effervescent optimism for the future that awaits us in the place where the rainbow ends.