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My quintet has been hired to play at a Commencement ceremony in which one of the staff members of the University will sing the National Anthem accompanied by the quintet.

I listened to her sing over the phone as I played piano so she could hear the chordal background to confirm that she REALLY is singing in her choice of the key of E-flat Major (with high melody note being Bb middle of the treble staff).

My quintet has Star Spangled Banner in Bb and Ab Major in our library. However, simply transposing one of those arrangements up or down a 4th or a 5th will place the horns at extreme ranges. Also, it will not take into account that we will be accompanying a singer, not performing the SSB independently.

I can write an arrangement that has the lower brass playing the melody and harmony while the trumpets provide occasional interjections or "punches." The arrangement should support the vocalist and help her sing in tune while not getting in her way.

But before I do the work, is anyone aware of such an arrangement that already exists (Klaus?) that can be uploaded?

Thanks very much,

Steve

Will you also be accompanying her in Swing VERY low, sweet chariot?

The easier solution may be the right hormone prescription. For the singer, not for the quintet.

K

imperialbari wrote:Will you also be accompanying her in Swing VERY low, sweet chariot?

The easier solution may be the right hormone prescription. For the singer, not for the quintet.

K

An even easier solution would be 40 cigarettes a day until the gig

brownhunter wrote:

Steve Marcus wrote: I listened to her sing over the phone as I played piano so she could hear the chordal background to confirm that she REALLY is singing in her choice of the key of E-flat Major (with high melody note being Bb middle of the treble staff).

So she's in an alto range if her high note is Bb in the middle of the treble staff. I was thinking for "And the ROCKETS red glare.." wouldn't that be Bb ABOVE the treble clef staff? (thinking she's a soprano ...

_____________________ (Fill in the blank with the name of your favorite coloratura diva) she ain't. Her voice is very pleasant, but she is definitely not a soprano.

if only she COULD do the higher Ab arrangement, I think it would be a better performance... higher notes, better impact.

Agreed. It would also save the work and time of writing a new arrangement. But we (the quintet) did not select the soloist. We're just the hired hands (and happy to be so in these challenging times).

When she sang over the phone, she began to add some of the pop/soul embellishments and took liberties with the tempo. I advised her that she could do that if she wished to sing a cappella. But since the client and she prefer an accompanied rendition of SSB, she understands that she will need to stay strictly in rhythm and on pitch.

Steve knows I am working on a setting. Whether I will manage to finish a useable version is to be seen.

Part of the problem with your anthem that it is heard in so many different versions. If one strips the embellishments and ignores Roseanne Barr, there appears to be some consensus. The best written version thereof available on the web appears to be Rachmaninoff’s setting for piano, which only needs very few modifications to the tune.

I happen to like the tune for its musical values, and I have looked at it before without getting the right idea for the right ensemble. The key of Eb is unusual for this tune, but it reveals that it is playable on natural horn with a set of notes available for good soloists of Beethoven’s era. The natural horn will not be employed in Steve’s context, but this frame of tonal reference provides me a concept:

Write the vocal soloist and the quintet horn like a pair of natural horns.

Treat the trumpets and the trombone like period military band instruments.

Write for the tuba as if it were a period bassoon with a lot of rhythmic energy coming from this part.

I got the horn part right and probably also the tuba part.

The cylindricals haven’t been finished yet. Part of the problem is that a period trumpet would not be able to play the tune, as it would miss the notes, which the horn can do by means of hand stopping. Writing notes not playable on a natural trumpet would sound wrong.

So the idea I will try to realise in the trumpets and in the trombone is about letting their signal/fanfare-type of figurations create a tight tonal corsage around the vocal soloist without playing the tune in unisono with her, so that she has no options but singing as well in time as in tune with no funny extra notes.

I have worked with fake period settings before. It is fun, even if I am well aware that the result will not be true. Two more centuries of music history will shine through in one way or another.

For those interested in the project I will upload .pdf and MIDI files of my most current result to my Yahoo based project of free music:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Yo ... 20in%20Eb/

The MIDI sounds worse in QuickTime than in RealPlayer (which isn’t particularly pretty sounding either).

Klaus

It's a pretty pass we've come to when a singer can specify Bb in the middle of the staff as her high note. Anyone with any kind of a voice that should be heard in public, even a "can belt-o" rather than a "bel canto" singer should be able to manage a D or an E [top space] as a high note. I just finished reading some singing websites that specify that I, as a "basso cantabile" should be able to manage an Ab above the staff [I'm close] and a well trained contralto could have a Bb above the staff, if not an occasional high C. Certainly any decent contralto should have the E and probably the F at the top of the staff, even if she has had little training.

I've heard good jazz type embellishments from singers on the SSB, but I've also heard awful ones. Maybe the only good thing about this arrangement is that the singer has to eschew these and sing in tempo.

I'm sorry that your group is not being allowed to play the thing alone without such a singer. If I had a handgun carry permit or three months to give this person lessons, maybe I could help you.

Best of luck!

What I personally would do in such a situation (and have done many a time before) is "yes, we will do the gig no problem, our charge for that would be $X, and if you want a tune we don't currently have in our repertoire, I shall be happy to arrange it myself for the occasion. Obviously this is quite a lot of work on my part, and would therefore cost you $X on top"

To me that sounds like a reasonable way to do things, and has been accepted by promotors as such as well, and has at times given me a handy little bit of extra income.

Tuba part should be easy, especially if you play it on your 983. An 4th up for trombone (and possibly horn, though I don't know how the horn part goes!) shouldn't be too bad. I no longer know anything about trumpets. I would think that having the lower horns play the melody with the vocalist might sound a bit "unusual".
I occasionally play a concert band arrangement in F (arrangement with a vocalist by my unit's 1SG) that seems to work fine so it can be done.

Then there's any number of undiplomatic ways to handle it...

I worked on my ideas of a setting for a Beethoven era military type brass ensemble of 2 natural horns in Eb, 2 natural trumpets in Eb, trombone, and serpent (or bassoon). In this case the part of the first natural horn would be covered by the vocalist.

With natural horns and trumpets there are firm limitations on the notes available. For people listening to music from that period these voicings for natural brasses have become so familiar that it sounds wrong, if modern instruments use their wider tonal abilities to add non-period notes to this music.

I made my setting on these conditions bearing in mind that the tonal and rhythmic framework from the vocalist had to be quite firm. As there would be no conductor, I had to find a way to honour the tradition of a fermata and at the same time keep the pulse going.

The notation in my draft was for Bb trumpets rather than for Eb trumpet, which may have made the inner logic of these parts less obvious. Anyway I didn’t agree upon the cuts suggested in the trumpet and trombone parts, so I suggested using another setting.

There might be some interest in how I followed my own ideas. I tried to make the score upload-able for TN, but the staff lines became blurred by the transformation to .pdf. The score now has the notation for the said natural brasses, but it would pose no problem for professional players to play them on modern instruments. There is a .midi file also, but no parts yet:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Yo ... 20in%20Eb/

Klaus

(edited once for apparent problems with link)

The parts have been made and are uploaded.

2 natural horns in Eb come in the same two-staff part.

The same goes for the 2 natural trumpets in Eb. As not all have Eb instruments this part also comes transposed for 2 Bb trumpets.

The trombone comes in tenor clef as well as in bass clef.

The serpent part likely is going to be performed on bass tuba, but that instrument wasn’t invented yet in the Beethoven era, from which my setting is inspired.

My index entry says:

John Stafford Smith: The Star-Spangled Banner in a setting by Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre (2010) for Beethoven era military brass ensemble - 2 natural horns in Eb, 2 natural trumpets in Eb (transposed parts in Bb also), trombone (Tenor and Bass Clefs), and serpent (tuba):

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Yo ... 20in%20Eb/


Klaus

The real .pdf part i much more readable.

Klaus

I have replied to mails from Steve Marcus a few times, but he apparently don’t get my answers, or they end in folders or on accounts he doesn’t watch.

Somebody closer to him might kindly make him aware about this.

Klaus