SKU: PR.466000470

UPC: 680160099405. 11 x 17 inches.

This is the second incarnation of a work I first composed in 1994 for symphonic wind ensemble. The earlier version was intended to be the summation of three-part suite, each part being named for a different national park in the Western United States. This orchestral version, commissioned in 1999 by the Utah Symphony and dedicated to the memory of Aaron Copland, is more than a re-scoring of the earlier piece; it is a re-thinking of all its elements. Zion is a place with unrivaled natural grandeur, being a sort of huge box canyon in which the traveler is constantly overwhelmed by towering rock walls on every side of him -- but it is also a place with a human history, having been inhabited by several tribes of native Americans before the arrival of the Mormon settlers in the mid-19th century. By the time the Mormons reached Utah, they had been driven all the way from New York State through Ohio and, with tragic losses, through Missouri. They saw Utah in general as a place nobody wanted, but they were nonetheless determined to keep it to themselves. Although Zion Canyon was never a Mormon Stronghold, the people who reached it and claimed it (and gave it its present name) had been through extreme trials. It is the religious fervor of these persecuted people that I was able to draw upon in creating Zion as a piece of music. There are two quoted hymns in the work: Zion's Walls (which Aaron Copland adapted to his own purposes in both his Old American Songs and the opera The Tender Land) and Zion's Security, which I found in the same volume in which Copland found Zion's Walls -- that inexhaustible storehouse of 19th-century hymnody called The Sacred Harp. My work opens with a three-verse setting of Zion's Security, a stern tune in F-sharp minor which is full of resolve. (The words of this hymn are resolute and strong, rallying the faithful to be firm, and describing the city of our God they hope to establish). This melody alternates with a fanfare tune, whose origins will be revealed in later music, until the second half of the piece begins: a driving rhythmic ostinato based on a 3/4-4/4 alternating meter scheme. This pauses at its height to restate Zion's Security one more time, in a rather obscure setting surrounded by freely shifting patterns in the flutes, clarinets, and percussion -- until the sun warms the ground sufficiently for the second hymn to appear. Zion's Walls is set in 7/8, unlike Copland's 9/8-6/8 meters (the original is quite strange, and doesn't really fit any constant meter), and is introduced by a warm horn solo. The two hymns vie for attention from here to the end of the piece, with the glowingly optimistic Zion's Walls finally achieving prominence. The work ends with a sense of triumph.

SKU: CA.3321549

ISBN 9790007051716. Language: Latin.

C. P. E. Bach's nine-movement Magnificat (1749), the first great vocal work from his Berlin years, is among the most magnificent sounding, in which the solo vocal parts are also among the most ambitious settings of the Hymn to the Virgin Mary (Luke 1). The work fulfills all the criteria required for a larger sacred composition: grandeur, dignity, polyphonic and concertante choral movements, sensitive (empfindsam) and expressive arias, a long concluding double fugue. This richly scored Magnificat (with 3 trumpets and timp. ad. lib.), which is almost one hour in duration, would be well suited, for example, as the central work on every Christmas or pre-Christmas concert programme. Score and part available separately - see item CA.3321500.

SKU: CA.3321513

ISBN 9790007051693. Language: Latin.

C. P. E. Bach's nine-movement Magnificat (1749), the first great vocal work from his Berlin years, is among the most magnificent sounding, in which the solo vocal parts are also among the most ambitious settings of the Hymn to the Virgin Mary (Luke 1). The work fulfills all the criteria required for a larger sacred composition: grandeur, dignity, polyphonic and concertante choral movements, sensitive (empfindsam) and expressive arias, a long concluding double fugue. This richly scored Magnificat (with 3 trumpets and timp. ad. lib.), which is almost one hour in duration, would be well suited, for example, as the central work on every Christmas or pre-Christmas concert programme. Score and part available separately - see item CA.3321500.

SKU: CA.3321504

ISBN 9790007240929. Language: Latin.

C. P. E. Bach's nine-movement Magnificat (1749), the first great vocal work from his Berlin years, is among the most magnificent sounding, in which the solo vocal parts are also among the most ambitious settings of the Hymn to the Virgin Mary (Luke 1). The work fulfills all the criteria required for a larger sacred composition: grandeur, dignity, polyphonic and concertante choral movements, sensitive (empfindsam) and expressive arias, a long concluding double fugue. This richly scored Magnificat (with 3 trumpets and timp. ad. lib.), which is almost one hour in duration, would be well suited, for example, as the central work on every Christmas or pre-Christmas concert programme. Score available separately - see item CA.3321500.

SKU: CA.3321505

ISBN 9790007051655. Language: Latin.

C. P. E. Bach's nine-movement Magnificat (1749), the first great vocal work from his Berlin years, is among the most magnificent sounding, in which the solo vocal parts are also among the most ambitious settings of the Hymn to the Virgin Mary (Luke 1). The work fulfills all the criteria required for a larger sacred composition: grandeur, dignity, polyphonic and concertante choral movements, sensitive (empfindsam) and expressive arias, a long concluding double fugue. This richly scored Magnificat (with 3 trumpets and timp. ad. lib.), which is almost one hour in duration, would be well suited, for example, as the central work on every Christmas or pre-Christmas concert programme. Score available separately - see item CA.3321500.