SKU: PR.416415760

UPC: 680160636532. 9 x 12 inches.

The 1712 Overture stands out in P.D.Q. Bach's oeuvre for two reasons, among others: it is by far the most programmatic instrumental piece among those by the minimeister of Wein-am-Rhein so far unearthed, and 2) its discovery has led to a revelation about the composer's father, Johann Sebastian Bach, that has exploded like a bombshell on the usually serene musicological landscape. The overture is based on an anecdote told to P.D.Q. Bach by a cousin, Peter Ulrich. Since P.U. Bach lived in Dudeldorf, only a few miles down the road from Wein-am-Rhein, he was P.D.Q.'s closest relative, and he was, in fact, one of the few members of the family who was on speaking terms with P.D.Q. The story, related to P.D.Q. (fortunately for us posterity types) in a letter, may be summarized thus: The town of Dudeldorf was founded by two brothers, Rudi and Dieter Dudel, early in the 18th century. Rudi remained mayor of the newborn burg for the rest of his long life, but Dieter had a dream of starting a musicians' colony, an entire city devoted to music, which dream, he finally decided, could be realized only in the New World. In 1712, he and several other bagpipers sailed to Boston, never to return to Germany. (Henceforth, Rudi became known as der deutscher Dudel and Dieter as the Yankee Dudel). Unfortunately, the head of the Boston Musicians' Guild had gotten wind of Dudel's plans, and Wilhelm Wiesel (pron. VEE-zle), known none too affectionately around town as Wiesel the Weasel, was not about to share what few gigs there were in colonial America with more foreigners and outside agitators. He and his cronies were on hand to meet Dudel's boat when it pulled into Boston Harbor; they intended to prevent the newcomers' disembarkation, but Dudel and his companions managed to escape to the other side of the bay in a dinghy, landing with just enough time to rent a carriage and horses before hearing the sound of The Weasel and his men, who had had to come around the long way. The Germans headed West, with the Bostonians in furious pursuit. soon the city had been left far behind, and by midnight so had the pursuers; Dieter Dudel decided that it was safe for him and his men to stop and sleep until daybreak. When they awoke, they found that they were in a beautiful landscape of low, forested mountains and pleasant fields, warmed by the brilliant morning sun and serenaded by an entrancing variety of birds. Here, Dudel thought, her is where I will build my colony. The immigrants continued down the road at a leisurely pace until they came upon a little church, all by itself in the countryside, from which there suddenly emanated the sounds of a pipe organ. At this point, the temptation to quote from P.U. Bach's letter to P.D.Q. cannot be resisted: They went inside and, after listening to the glorious music for a while, introduced themselves to the organist. And who do you think it was? Are you ready for this -- it was your old man! Hey, no kidding -- you know, I'm sure, that your father was the guy to get when it came to testing new organs, and whoever had that one in Massachusetts built offered old Sebastian a tidy sum to go over there and check it out. The unexpected meeting with J.S. Bach and his sponsors was interrupted by the sound of horse hooves, as the dreaded Wiesel and his men thundered on to the scene. They had been riding all night, however, and they were no spring chickens to start with, and as soon as they reached the church they all dropped, exhausted, to the ground. The elated Germans rang the church bells and offered to buy everyone a beer at the nearest tavern. There they were taught, and joined in singing, what might be called the national anthem of the New World. The melody of this pre-revolutionary patriotic song is still remembered (P.D.Q. Bach quotes it, in the bass instruments, near the end of the overture), but is words are now all but forgotten: Freedom, of thee we sing, Freedom e'er is our goal; Death to the English King, Long live Rock and Ross. The striking paucity of biographical references to Johann Sebastian Bah during the year 1712 can now be explained: he was abroad for a significant part of that year, testing organs in the British Colonies. That this revelation has not been accepted as fact by the musicological establishment is no surprise, since it means that a lot of books would have to be rewritten. The members of that establishment haven't even accepted the existence of P.D.Q. Bach, one of whose major works the 1712 Overture certainly is. It is also a work that shows Tchaikowsky up as the shameless plagiarizer that some of us have always known he was. The discovery of this awesome opus was made possible by a Boston Pops Centennial Research Commission; the first modern performance took place at the opening concert of the 100th anniversary season of that orchestra, under the exciting but authentic direction of John Williams.

SKU: HL.49018099

ISBN 9790001158428. UPC: 884088567347. 8.25x11.75x0.457 inches. Latin - German.

On letting go(Concerning the selection of the texts) In the selection of the texts, I have allowed myself to be motivated and inspired by the concept of 'letting go'. This appears to me to be one of the essential aspects of dying, but also of life itself. We humans cling far too strongly to successful achievements, whether they have to do with material or ideal values, or relationships of all kinds. We cannot and do not want to let go, almost as if our life depended on it. As we will have to practise the art of letting go at the latest during our hour of death, perhaps we could already make a start on this while we are still alive. Tagore describes this farewell with very simple but strikingly vivid imagery: 'I will return the key of my door'. I have set this text for tenor solo. Here I imagine, and have correspondingly noted in a certain passage of the score, that the protagonist finds himself as though 'in an ocean' of voices in which he is however not drowning, but immersing himself in complete relaxation. The phenomenon of letting go is described even more simply and tersely in Psalm 90, verse 12: 'So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom'. This cannot be expressed more plainly.I have begun the requiem with a solo boy's voice singing the beginning of this psalm on a single note, the note A. This in effect says it all. The work comes full circle at the culmination with a repeat of the psalm which subsequently leads into a resplendent 'lux aeterna'. The intermediate texts of the Requiem which highlight the phenomenon of letting go in the widest spectrum of colours originate on the one hand from the Latin liturgy of the Messa da Requiem (In Paradisum, Libera me, Requiem aeternam, Mors stupebit) and on the other hand from poems by Joseph von Eichendorff, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore and Rainer Maria Rilke.All texts have a distinctive positive element in common and view death as being an organic process within the great system of the universe, for example when Hermann Hesse writes: 'Entreiss dich, Seele, nun der Zeit, entreiss dich deinen Sorgen und mache dich zum Flug bereit in den ersehnten Morgen' ['Tear yourself way , o soul, from time, tear yourself away from your sorrows and prepare yourself to fly away into the long-awaited morning'] and later: 'Und die Seele unbewacht will in freien Flugen schweben, um im Zauberkreis der Nacht tief und tausendfach zu leben' ['And the unfettered soul strives to soar in free flight to live in the magic sphere of the night, deep and thousandfold']. Or Joseph von Eichendorff whose text evokes a distant song in his lines: 'Und meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flugel aus. Flog durch die stillen Lande, als floge sie nach Haus' ['And my soul spread its wings wide. Flew through the still country as if homeward bound.']Here a strong romantically tinged occidental resonance can be detected which is however also accompanied by a universal spirit going far beyond all cultures and religions. In the beginning was the sound Long before any sort of word or meaningful phrase was uttered by vocal chords, sounds, vibrations and tones already existed. This brings us back to the music. Both during my years of study and at subsequent periods, I had been an active participant in the world of contemporary music, both as percussionist and also as conductor and composer. My early scores had a somewhat adventurous appearance, filled with an abundance of small black dots: no rhythm could be too complicated, no register too extreme and no harmony too dissonant. I devoted myself intensely to the handling of different parameters which in serial music coexist in total equality: I also studied aleatory principles and so-called minimal music.I subsequently emigrated and took up residence in Spain from where I embarked on numerous travels over the years to India, Africa and South America. I spent repeated periods during this time as a resident in non-European countries. This meant that the currents of contemporary music swept past me vaguely and at a great distance. What I instead absorbed during this period were other completely new cultures in which I attempted to immerse myself as intensively as possible.I learned foreign languages and came into contact with musicians of all classes and styles who had a different cultural heritage than my own: I was intoxicated with the diversity of artistic potential.Nevertheless, the further I distanced myself from my own Western musical heritage, the more this returned insistently in my consciousness.The scene can be imagined of sitting somewhere in the middle of the Brazilian jungle surrounded by the wailing of Indians and out of the blue being provided with the opportunity to hear Beethoven's late string quartets: this can be a heart-wrenching experience, akin to an identity crisis. This type of experience can also be described as cathartic. Whatever the circumstances, my 'renewed' occupation with the 'old' country would not permit me to return to the point at which I as an audacious young student had maltreated the musical parameters of so-called contemporary music. A completely different approach would be necessary: an extremely careful approach, inching my way gradually back into the Western world: an approach which would welcome tradition back into the fold, attempt to unfurl the petals and gently infuse this tradition with a breath of contemporary life.Although I am aware that I will not unleash a revolution or scandal with this approach, I am nevertheless confident as, with the musical vocabulary of this Requiem, I am travelling in an orbit in which no ballast or complex structures will be transported or intimated: on the contrary, I have attempted to form the message of the texts in music with the naivety of a 'homecomer'. Harald WeissColonia de San PedroMarch 2009.

SKU: BR.PB-5432

World premiere of the orchestral version: Stuttgart, January 1, 2018World premiere of the piano version: Mito, June 17, 2017

Have a look into EB 9283.

ISBN 9790004212790. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Marche fatale is an incautiously daring escapade that may annoy the fans of my compositions more than my earlier works, many of which have prevailed only after scandals at their world premieres. My Marche fatale has, though, little stylistically to do with my previous compositional path; it presents itself without restraint, if not as a regression, then still as a recourse to those empty phrases to which modern civilization still clings in its daily utility music, whereas music in the 20th and 21st centuries has long since advanced to new, unfamiliar soundscapes and expressive possibilities. The key term is banality. As creators we despise it, we try to avoid it - though we are not safe from the cheap banal even within new aesthetic achievements.Many composers have incidentally accepted the banal. Mozart wrote Ein musikalischer Spass [A Musical Jape], a deliberately amateurishly miscarried sextet. Beethoven's Bagatellen op. 119 were rejected by the publisher on the grounds that few will believe that this minor work is by the famous Beethoven. Mauricio Kagel wrote, tongue in cheek, so to speak, Marsche, um den Sieg zu verfehlen [Marches for being Unvictorious], Ligeti wrote Hungarian Rock; in his Circus Polka Stravinsky quoted and distorted the famous, all too popular Schubert military march, composed at the time for piano duet. I myself do not know, though, whether I ought to rank my Marche fatale alongside these examples: I accept the humor in daily life, the more so as this daily life for some of us is not otherwise to be borne. In music, I mistrust it, considering myself all the closer to the profounder idea of cheerfulness having little to do with humor. However: Isn't a march with its compelling claim to a collectively martial or festive mood absurd, a priori? Is it even music at all? Can one march and at the same time listen? Eventually, I resolved to take the absurd seriously - perhaps bitterly seriously - as a debunking emblem of our civilization that is standing on the brink. The way - seemingly unstoppable - into the black hole of all debilitating demons: that can become serene. My old request of myself and my music-creating surroundings is to write a non-music, whence the familiar concept of music is repeatedly re-defined anew and differently, so that derailed here - perhaps? - in a treacherous way, the concert hall becomes the place of mind-opening adventures instead of a refuge in illusory security. How could that happen? The rest is - thinking.(Helmut Lachenmann, 2017)CD (Version for Piano):Nicolas Hodges CD Wergo WER 7393 2 Bibliography:Ich bin nicht ,,pietistisch verformt. Ein Gesprach [von Jan Brachmann] mit dem Komponisten Helmut Lachenmann, in: FAZ vom 7. Juni 2018, p. 15.

World premiere of the piano version: Mito/Japan, June 17, 2017, World premiere of the orchestral version: Stuttgart, January 1, 2018, World premiere of the ensemble version: Frankfurt, December 9, 2020.

SKU: HL.14032192

ISBN 9788759858394. 12.0x16.5x0.78 inches. International (more than one language).

Symphony No. 6 for orchestra, 1997-99. Preface / Program Note:... with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day(New Testament, 2 Peter 3:8)My SYMPHONY NO. 6 was commissioned by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gteborg Symphony Orchestra and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, to be premiered at the millenium 2000.The subtitle AT THE END OF THE DAY can be understood literally or it can mean when all is added up. However, in my opinion, nothing ever quite adds up, there is always something missing, any ending will be provisional ...This symphony appears to end only a few minutes into the first movement, the first passage, as the music fades away to almost-silence, after a start of flying colours. But then there is still something, a small motive (first heard in the initial sound-waves) which reappears, hesitant, but persistent, and this embryo is what leads on the musical progression. An agitated section of many instrumental voices comes next, until all the voices become obsessed with the same phrase, a see-saw motive based on thirds. This section evolves into almost martial ferocity, when broken off by a tutti descent into an extreme bass-world (a bass-world which actually permeates the whole symphony, emplyoing instruments that I have never used before: double-bass tuba, double-bass trombone, double-bass clarinet, and bass flute).The second movement, the second passage, apparently takes off where the first passage ended, but now the events are more ambiguous, and the same music may be perceived as fast-moving one moment and slow-moving the next. This section is a kind of passacaglia, the characteristic baroque bass-variation.Without a break follows the third and last passage, in a contrasting high register. The music is rhythmically knotty as well as freely flowing. As in the beginning of the symphony, a never-ending descent or fall breaks off the events, and at the very end a delta of new beginnings, of other worlds, is revealed ....The symphony is dedicated to Helle, my wife. - Per Norgard.

SKU: LO.30-3636L

UPC: 000308151756.

Orchestral Score and CD with Printable Parts for 10/5231L Mary McDonald and Rose Aspinall combine their God-given talents to deliver a mighty anthem well-suited for missions and outreach emphases. Use either the solid piano accompaniment or dramatic Michael Lawrence orchestration to present the grand statement that we are to be a tangible expression of God’s love and grace to the world.

SKU: BR.EOS-20472-00

Today, it is hard to believe that Bedrich Smetana kept receiving rejections when he tried to get his enormously popular Moldau printed.

ISBN 9790004780008. 10 x 12.5 inches.

What is also amazing is that the first text-critical edition prepared by the Czech Smetana expert Milan Pospisil in 1999, which had entailed an exhaustive evaluation of the sources and been given a full text-critical editorial treatment as a Eulenburg study score, had no resonance of any kind among performers since no performance material had been published. After 15 years, Pospisils edition is finally being completed in a manner suitable for practice: with a conducting score and orchestral parts which will ensure that all future performances are based on a musical text that is as reliable as can be.

The work depicts the course of the river Vltava, beginning with its first two sources, the cold and warm Vltava, and the confluence of the two streams that join to form a single river; then the course of the Vltava through forests and meadows, and through open countryside where a peasant wedding is being celebrated; water-sprites dance by the light of the moon; on the nearby cliffs castles, mansions and ruins rise proudly into the air; the Vltava eddies in the St John's Rapids, then flows in a broad stream as it continues its course towards Prague, where the Vysehrad appears, before the river finally disappears into the distance as it flows majestically into the Elbe.

Vltava (The Moldau), Smetana's best-known and most frequently performed orchestral work, was written between 19 November and 8 December 1874, at a time when Smetana was already completely deaf. The world premiere took place in Prague on 4 April 1875, but the score was not published until 1880.

SKU: AP.38406S

UPC: 038081438634. English. Traditional Scottish.

Conjure images of bagpipes, drums, and parades, and enjoy familiar Scottish music in this lovely arrangement of an ancient tune. All parts remain in 1st position. The optional percussion will add to the mood but is also cued in the lower strings.

About Orchestra Expressions

Play great songs such as Over the Rainbow, Batman, This Land Is Your Land, and Star Wars (Main Title). Listen to and play a variety of styles of music: popular, traditional, classical, folk and patriotic. Read and write music; compose and improvise. Perform in a concert and play for your family and friends. Be a conductor of the orchestra. Learn about composers, such as Antonin Dvorak, Johann Pachelbel, Jacques Offenbach, Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Giuseppe Verdi, George M. Cohan, George Frideric Handel, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giacomo Puccini, Georges Bizet, Neal Hefti, and John Williams. Discover how music and art are related. Learn about a variety of musical ensembles including string orchestra, full orchestra, mariachi band, steel drum band, dixieland jazz band, rock band, and more. Play music from around the world, including North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

SKU: HL.14025900

0.453 inches.

Herrmann wanted to write a musical portrait of his friend and colleague Alfred Hitchcok, so choose motifs from the movie The Trouble With Harry, one of Hitchcock's more personal and humorous films. This single-movement work for Orchestra employs some of the more familiar elements of Herrmann's compositional style: short musical phrases repeated and then repeated again in other positions, sharp use of dynamics among them. From the first note, the creepiness begins.Bernard Herrmann was among the very greatest of all composers of music for cinema and there are many who avow that he was the greatest of all. A very short list of the films for which this award-winning composercreated soundtracks includes Citizen Kane, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, Jason and Argonauts, Fahrenheit 451, Obsession and Taxi Driver. He had a long and fertile association with Alfred Hitchcock during the most productive period of Hitchcock's career and with Orson Welles from the time of the Mercury Theatre on the Air. In addition to his conducting and composing work for the entertainment world, Herrmann wrote concert pieces, including a symphony, opera and cantata.