NO STRINGS ATTACHED

Great works for Symphony orchestra as transcribed for Concert Band

Narrators Script

Sheherazade

Bedtime stories take on a new meaning in Scheherazade. Scheherazade’s husband, the Sultan,
had the nasty habit of marrying a woman at night and killing her in the morning.

Scheherazade thought up a plan. Every night she would tell him a story, and leave it hanging.
1001 captivating stories later, he decided to keep her.

Inspired by his friend Alexander Borodin’s composition “Prince Igor” and the “1001 Tales of the
Arabian nights”, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov composed the symphonic suite
called Scheherazade in 1888.

Calvin Custer’s arrangement blends Scheherazade’s separate movements into one continuous
piece.
Appalachian Spring
Composed as a ballet for the Martha Graham dance company Appalachian Spring was first
performed on October 30, 1944. Copland’s original version was for thirteen instruments but was
later expanded to a full orchestra
Aaron Copland has been called “the president of American music.” He was one of the earliest
composers to put his finger on the musical pulse of the country, and he helped to establish a
distinctive American sound, particularly with his first two ballet hits, Billy the Kid and Rodeo.
No Copland score, however, more perfectly captures the vast open spaces, the homespun
plainness than Appalachian Spring.
In a score that is immersed with folk music, there’s just one actual folk song—the then obscure
Shaker song “Simple Gifts” that Copland picked out of a book on Shaker music and dance.
Apparently, a line in Graham’s initial script, referring to a “Shaker rocking chair,” pointed him in
this direction. Copland’s score won both the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award and a
Pulitzer Prize.
Copland offered this summary of the ballet’s action:
“We see a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the
Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last [nineteenth] century. The bride-to-be and
the young farmer-husband enact the emotions both joyful and apprehensive, that their
new partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests the need for confidence of
experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange
and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their
new house.”

Robert Longfield has masterfully created an arrangement that has all the character of the original
Carmina Burana
Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is probably the most frequently performed choral work of the 21st
century, made popular by the memorable surfing advert for Old Spice aftershave. But have you
ever wondered where its familiar title comes from?

The name has Latin roots – “Carmina” means “songs”, while “Burana” is the Latinised form of
Beuren, the name of a monastery in Bavaria. So, “Carmina Burana” translates as “Songs Of
Beuren”, and refers to a collection of 13th-century songs and poems that was discovered in
Beuren Germany in 1803.

The songs and poems were written in a mix of Latin, German and medieval French that
celebrated the joys of the tavern, nature, love and lust.

Orff chose 24 of the songs and set them to music in what he termed a “scenic cantata”.

Carmina Burana is divided into three sections – Springtime, In the Tavern and The Court Of
Love – preceded by and ending with an invocation to Fortune. Written between 1935 and 1936
for soloists, chorus and orchestra.

After the triumphant premiere of Carmina Burana, Orff, then 41, wrote to his publishers:

“Everything I have written to date, and which you have, unfortunately, published, can be
destroyed. With Carmina Burana my collected works begin.” However, nothing Orff
subsequently wrote ever came close to approaching the popularity of Carmina Burana.

In this arrangement by Jay Bocook we hear the main theme “O Fortuna” as well as “Fortune
plango vulnera”
Weber clarinet concerto
Carl Maria von Weber wrote his Clarinet Concerto No. 1 for the clarinettist Heinrich
Bärmann in 1811. The piece is considered a standard in any clarinetists repertoire. The work
consists of three movements. Tonight the band will play the first movement in an arrangement
by David Bennett who died in 1990. He was a clarinetist and a bandmaster and was a popular
band music arranger in the 30’s and 40’s. Tonight we have a special challenge for you. To
make Bennett’s arrangement better fit the commonly played version of the concerto we have had
to add 17 extra measures…can you spot them…?
Our soloist this evening will be band member and recent LU music grad Joel Routhier..
Joel is excited to graduate from Lakehead University with an Honours Bachelor of Music degree.
He has studied under E-Chen Hsu for the past 7 years and has been a member of the Thunder
Bay Symphony Youth Orchestra for the past 6 years, where he has held the Principal Position for
4 years, and has been a member of the Thunder Bay Community Band for about as long. Joel
competed in the first two TBSYO concerto competitions placing 3rd for both of those years
consecutively. In 2017, he placed 1st in his category at the Ontario Music Festivals Association
(Provincials) in Hamilton ON. From 2015-2017, he was a member of the Dennis Wick Canadian
Wind Orchestra, an honors ensemble at Music Fest Canada, and this past season has also had the
opportunity to perform with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra. Joel will re-locate to
Waterloo, Ontario in the fall to continue his pursuit with music.
Jupiter
His name may not sound English, but his music certainly does. Gustav Holst is among the best
loved of all 20th-century English composers. His father was a professional organist and
choirmaster; his mother, was a talented singer and pianist. On his father's side, Gustav's ancestors
were professional musicians going back three generations. By 1892, Gustav, though still a
teenager, composed an accomplished and successful Gilbert-and-Sullivan-style operetta.

We can hear the full range of Gustav Holst's musical background in his best-known composition,
The Planets. The confident exuberance of The Planets suggests that this suite was easy for him
to compose, but Holst had accomplished something extremely difficult with it, sustaining our
rapt attention for seven movements spanning almost an hour with no content other than the
personalities and moods represented by each planet. Every movement is intensely colorful and
specific, yet there is no story line, no overarching form…nothing but mood and the richness of
the melody

Jupiter, the bringer of jollity, in a movement full of the charm of traditional English folk tunes.
There is something deeply endearing in Jupiter’s wholesome cheer that has made it the most
popular of the suite’s movements.
The Four Seasons
Antonio Vivaldi’s musical output was enormous. He composed more than 500 concertos
spotlighting one or more players; most are for violin, but the rest feature an astonishing variety
of instruments. Some of these he wrote for the all girl orchestra of the Ospedale della Pietà, the
most musical of Venice’s orphanages, where he taught music on and off over a period of nearly
four decades, beginning in 1703.
His group of four violin concertos popularly known as The Four Seasons represents his most
famous work. These are the first four concertos in a collection of 12, under the title The Trial of
Harmony and Invention
Each concerto has an accompanying poe, that served as the inspiration for the music.
This arrangement by John Stout is structured like Vivaldi’s original in that it has 4 movements
but each movement is from a different season.
It starts with the first movement allegro from Spring, then we hear the largo movement from
Winter. The third movement is a largo from Summer. The arrangement ends with an allegro
from Fall
The Second Waltz

The Suite for Variety Orchestra is a piece in eight movements by Dmitri Shostakovich.
For many years the Suite for Variety Orchestra was misidentified as the "lost" Suite for Jazz
Orchestra No. 2(1938), a different work in three movements that was lost during World War II,
the piano score of which was rediscovered in 1999.
The Waltz 2 movement is very popular with arrangers (there are 4 arrangements for concert band
alone.) and as used on the soundtrack to the 1999 Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, as the
opening title and closing credit theme
Elegy for Violin and Piano

The next piece will be departure from tonight’s format of orchestra transcriptions. This
arrangement is written by our “Composer/arranger in residence’’ and horn section member,
David Hawkins. It was premiered two weeks ago at the Zorya Ukranian dance company’s 20th
anniversary concert.
Little is known about the composer Ivan Levytski.
He was born in 1875 in the Ukraine. He was a teacher, composer, choir conductor and a
graduate of the Kiev conservatory. He also studied in Vienna. He wrote many pieces for violin
and piano as well a music for choir and vocal soloist. He was the author of numerous music
textbooks. When he died in 1938, almost none of his music was published and only existed in
hand written form.
It is a dramatic piece of music and David has done a marvelous job of setting it for the concert
band.
Bolero
Before he left for a triumphant tour of North America in January 1928, Maurice Ravel had
agreed to write a Spanish-flavoured ballet score for his friend, the Russian dancer and actress Ida
Rubinstein.

Ravel had long toyed with the idea of building a composition from a single theme which would
grow simply through harmony and instrumentation. Bolero’s famous theme came to him on
while on holiday, and was completed quickly, in five months – it had to be ready for Rubinstein
to choreograph.

The relentless snare-drum underpins the whole of the work, as Ravel builds on the simple tune
until, with a daring modulation from C major to E major, he finally releases the pent-up tension
with a burst of fireworks.

Although Ravel considered Boléro one of his least important works, it has always been his most
popular.