SKU: PR.114419850
ISBN 9781491135808. UPC: 680160681044. 9 x 12 inches.
Both a spectacular concerto for saxophone, and a dramatic tone poem on Roman mythology, QUICKSILVER is a 23-minute concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Ensemble by one of the sax literature’s most commissioned and admired composers.Through worded captions as well as gorgeously expressive tone painting, Movement 1 depicts the birth and childhood pranks of Mercury, Movement 2 shows him escorting souls to the gates of the Underworld, and Movement 3 is a phantasmagoric finale portraying Mercury as messenger amid the conflicts of other mythological figures. There are many YouTube performances available, both in the original version with Wind Ensemble, and with Piano.In addition to being another name for the element mercury, “quicksilver†is used to describe something that changes quickly or is difficult to contain. My concerto of the same name was inspired by the Roman god Mercury, as well as the mercurial nature of the saxophone: unpredictable, very lively, and volatile. Mercury (known as Hermes in Greek mythology) is best known for his winged shoes, which allowed him to fly swiftly as the messenger of his fellow Olympians. Mercury had other duties too, including serving as the god of merchants, travelers, and tricksters; he also ushered souls of the departed to the Underworld.Quicksilver tells three tales of the Roman god. The first movement (Antics of a Newborn God) opens with the birth of Mercury; after he takes his first steps, he toddles around, gleefully looking for mischief. He stumbles across a herd of cows that belong to his brother Apollo; Mercury slyly lets the cows out of their pen before toddling onward with his mischief-making.In the second movement (Guiding Souls to the Underworld), Pluto, god of the Underworld, bids Mercury to bring him fresh souls. The movement begins with death-knells tolling for humans who are about to die; Mercury picks up these souls and leads them down to the gates of the Underworld.The third and final movement (Messenger of Olympus) depicts Mercury as he is busily running errands for various gods and goddesses. We first encounter him mid-flight as he dashes to earth to find Aeneas, a Trojan lieutenant who had been run out of Troy by the invading Greeks. Aeneas is on a quest to find land on which to establish a new city that would eventually become Rome. While traveling, he is distracted from his quest when he meets the beautiful queen Dido. They live together for many years before Mercury intervenes; he chastises Aeneas for giving up on his quest and persuades him to pick it up again. As Aeneas mournfully resumes his journey, we hear Dido perish of a broken heart. Mercury then takes to the skies to seek out Perseus, who is preparing to kill Medusa, the hideous gorgon who has snakes for hair and a gaze that turns those who catch her glance into stone. Mercury advises Perseus on how to slay Medusa and lends Perseus his sword to do the deed. We hear Perseus victorious in the beheading of Medusa, after which Mercury takes to the skies once more to fly home to Olympus.
SKU: PR.114418250
UPC: 680160640959. 9 x 12 inches.
In 2011, Barbara Garrop, my mother, commissioned me to write a piano trio in memory of Norman Garrop, my father, who passed away about thirty years ago. When I started brainstorming about topics for the piece, I found it difficult to recall many moments of my early life involving my father. Too many years had passed, and the memories that I could summon were of achild looking up to her father, not an adult relating to an equal. However, while collecting stories of my father from various family members, along with discovering a number of objects that had once belonged to him and that I had stored away in boxes decades ago, I began to realize that this piece wasn't so much about my father as it was about my re-discovering the man that he was: a loving husband and dad who cared deeply about his family and his passions (which included bike riding, collecting coins, strumming our guitar, playing baseball, watching football games, entertaining people, helping to run local theater and puppet productions, and carving objects out of wook); an accountant who dreamed of a better future: a treasurer of our local synagogue; an early advocate for computers (we owned an Apple II+); and a pranster with a great sense of humor. Ultimately, I decided to musically tell the story of my search for these memories. In the first movement (Without), a child calls out in a sing-song voice, searching for her lost parent. This search intesifies over the course of the movement through a series of themes, including a stepping motif in which a two-note progression steadily climbs higher, a pseudo-jewish folksong, and a passionate longing theme. The child's search becomes increasingly intense throughout the movement, calling out fervently and repeatedly to the parent; the movement ends in a moment of great tnesion and uncertainty. The second movment (Within) quietly opens with the lost parent finally answering, represented by a solo cello; the child (now personified by the violin) has found the parent within the sanctuary of her own heart. This movement highlights the joy and solemnity of this beautiful discovery. -S.G.
SKU: PR.11441825S
UPC: 680160643745. 9 x 12 inches.
SKU: CF.W2682
ISBN 9781491144954. UPC: 680160902453. 9 x 12 inches. Key: E major.
Edited by Elisa Koehler, Associate Professor and Chair of the Music Department at Goucher College, this new edition of Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Concerto in E Major for trumpet in E and piano presented in its original key.The concerto by Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837)holds a unique place in the trumpet repertoire. Like theconcerto by Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) it was written forthe Austrian trumpeter Anton Weidinger (1766–1852) andhis newly invented keyed trumpet, performed a few timesby Weidinger, and then forgotten for more than 150 yearsuntil it was revived in the twentieth century. But unlikeHaydn’s concerto in Eb major, Hummel’s Concerto a Trombaprincipale (1803) was written in the key of E major for atrumpet pitched in E, not E≤. This difference of key proved tobe quite a conundrum for trumpeters and music publishersin the twentieth century. The first modern edition, publishedby Fritz Stein in 1957, transposed the concerto down onehalf step into the key of E≤ to make it more playable on atrumpet in Bb, which had become the standard instrumentfor trumpeters by the middle of the twentieth century.Armando Ghitalla made the first recording of the Hummel in1964 in the original key of E (on a C-trumpet) after editinga performing edition in 1959 in the transposed key of E≤ (forBb trumpet) published by Robert King Music. Needless tosay, the trumpet had changed dramatically in terms of design,manufacture, and cultural status between 1803 and 1957, andthe notion of classical solo repertoire for the modern trumpetwas still in its formative stages when the Hummel concertowas reborn.These factors conspired to create confusion regarding thenumerous interpretative challenges involved in performingthe Hummel concerto according to the composer’s originalintentions on modern trumpets. For those seeking the bestscholarly information, a facsimile of Hummel’s originalmanuscript score was published in 2011 with a separatevolume of analytical commentary by Edward H. Tarr,1 whoalso published the first modern edition of the concertoin the original key of E major (Universal Edition, 1972).This present edition—available in both keys: Eb and Emajor—strives to build a bridge between scholarship andperformance traditions in order to provide viable options forboth the purist and the practitioner.Following the revival of the Haydn trumpet concerto, acase could be made that some musicians were influencedby a type of normalcy bias that resulted in performancetraditions that attempted to make the Hummel morelike the Haydn by putting it in the same key, insertingunnecessary cadenzas, and adding trills where they mightnot belong.2 Issues concerning tempo and ornamentationposed additional challenges. As scholarship and performancepractice surrounding the concerto have become betterknown, trumpeters have increasingly sought to performthe concerto in the original key of E major—sometimes onkeyed trumpets—and to reconsider more recent performancetraditions in the transposed key of Eb.Regardless of the key, several factors need to be addressedwhen performing the Hummel concerto. The most notoriousof these is the interpretation of the wavy line (devoid of a “tr†indication), which appears in the second movement(mm. 4–5 and 47–49) and in the finale (mm. 218–221). InHummel’s manuscript score, the wavy line resembles a sinewave with wide, gentle curves, rather than the tight, buzzingappearance of a traditional trill line. Some have argued that itmay indicate intense vibrato or a fluttering tremolo betweenopen and closed fingerings on a keyed trumpet.3 In Hummel’s1828 piano treatise, he wrote that a wavy line without a “trâ€sign indicates uneigentlichen Triller oder den getrillertenNoten [“improper†trills or the notes that are trilled], andrecommends that they be played as main note trills that arenot resolved [ohne Nachschlag].4 Hummel’s piano treatisewas published twenty-five years after he wrote the trumpetconcerto, and his advocacy for main note trills (rather thanupper note trills) was controversial at the time, so trumpetersshould consider all of the available options when formingtheir own interpretation of the wavy line.Unlike Haydn, Hummel did not include any fermatas wherecadenzas could be inserted in his trumpet concerto. The endof the first movement, in particular, includes something likean accompanied cadenza passage (mm. 273–298), a featureHummel also included at the end of the first movement ofhis Piano Concerto No. 5 in Ab Major, Op. 113 (1827). Thethird movement includes a quote (starting at m. 168) fromCherubini’s opera, Les Deux Journées (1802), that diverts therondo form into a coda replete with idiomatic fanfares andvirtuosic figuration.5 Again, no fermata appears to signal acadenza, but the obbligato gymnastics in the solo trumpetpart function like an accompanied cadenza.Other necessary considerations include tempo choicesand ornamentation. Hummel did not include metronomemarkings to quantify his desired tempi for the movements,but clues may be gleaned through the surface evidence(metric pulse, beat values, figuration) and from the stratifiedtempo table that Hummel included in his 1828 piano treatise,where the first movement’s “Allegro con spirito†is interpretedas faster than the “Allegro†(without a modifier) of the finale.6In the realm of ornamentation, Hummel includes severalturns and figures that are open to interpretation. This editionincludes Hummel’s original symbols (turns and figuration)along with suggested realizations to provide musicians withoptions for forming their own interpretation.Finally, trumpeters are encouraged to listen to Mozart pianoconcerti as an interpretive context for Hummel’s trumpetconcerto. Hummel was a noted piano virtuoso at the end ofthe Classical era, and he studied with Mozart in Vienna asa young boy. Hummel also composed his own cadenzas forsome of Mozart’s piano concerti, and the twenty-five-year-oldcomposer imitated Mozart’s orchestral gestures and melodicfiguration in the trumpet concerto (most notably in the secondmovement, which resembles the famous slow movement ofMozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467).
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