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So I'm in an occasional brass quintet at my church. It includes me (a not-incompetent-but-very-amateur tubist), two HS band directors on trumpet and trombone, a trumpet performance senior who may not get an orchestral job but is more than up to anything we come up with, and a horn player in a small orchestra, who works as a secretary to actually pay the bills. So two semi-pros, two band directors, and a fundraiser who likes to fool around on the tuba.

The semi-pros are getting their high-octane needs met elsewhere, and do this quintet for personal reasons. They're not normally high strung about what we play.

BUT. The secretary/orchestral horn has declared that at Christmas we need to do "real quintet music." Cool. I like the sound of that. Partly what she means is that she doesn't want to arrange hymn tunes, as she has in the past. But I think she (and others of us) legitimately want to play something a little more challenging than what we've done in the past.

It seems to have fallen to me, the most confirmed amateur in the group, to identify this "real quintet music." I'm not complaining by any means, but I need help.

So I'm interested in what suggestions the TNFJs have for this situation... Interesting music, but accessible.

Any ideas?

RIchard Price sets are the best I know of. They should be available at mist sheet music retailers...

Here's the best of our book. The numbers are not a measure of difficulty, just how well I like them.

Three part suite also can seperate
Away in a Manger/Jack Gale 3+
Jingle Bells/Jack Gale 4
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas/JAck Gale 3+

Four part suite can't seperate
Christmas Garland/Baldwin 3+
Here we come a Carolin, Good Christian Men, What Child is this, I Saw THree Ships

Canadian Brass Christmas/Luther Henderson
Go Tell it On the Mountain 3
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 3
I Saw Three Ships 3+
Sussex Carol 3+

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas/Martin 4

Three part suite can seperate
Christmas Suite/Frackenpohl
Let it Snow 4+
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer 4+

Silent Night/Harvey 4+

Sleigh Ride/Purdie 4

Twelve Days of Christmas/Holcome 4

Three part suite can seperate with imagination
Three French Christmas Carols/Savino
Ding Dong Merrily on High 4
O Come O Come Emannuel 4+
Angels We have heard on High 3

Jesu Bambino/Klophaus 4

O Holy Night/Faulconer 4+

We Three Kings Traditional/Holcombe 3
We Three Kings Swing/Holcombe 3+

We Wish You a Merry Christmas/ Elkjer 4

We Wish You a Merry Christmas/ Rutter 4

Thanks for these suggestions. I'll pursue them!

Get the Dallas Brass Christmas quintet book.

http://www.dallasbrass.com/merry.html

Ooooooo! I have that Dallas Brass CD. Didn't know the arrangements were for sale. Any idea of where to find them? I feel a shopping spree coming on!

You can purchase the whole set on their web site for $100 and get another copy of the CD with it:

http://www.dallasbrass.com/shop.html" target="_blank

All the best.

Roger

The Price stuff is very good; but you might want to check the tessitura for the tuba. I also agree that the Dallas Brass book is very good. There are some very nice arrangements available on Gordon Cherry's website, http://www.cherry-classics.com/. They are challenging though.

In addition to all the great stuff already mentioned, there are a couple more that I really like:

1). LA trumpet player Rob Roy McGregor has arranged a suite of carols that is really awesome. Balquidder is his publisher, I believe.

2). Gary Slechta (Austin Symphony trumpet player) has done some really cool arrangements in a variety of styles. I don't recall the name of his company, but if you google him you'll find it. Each carol is sold separately.

One thing that's come up in my conversations is the Vaughan Williams "Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending".

I am a complete fool for RVW tunes and harmonizations, even if he hadn't done the tuba solo, and "Lo, He Comes" is first among equals as far as I'm concerned. So when someone else mentions the possibility I have to keep the lid on. But I'd really love to make this happen in early December.

On iTunes there's a recording of the Wells Cathedral choirs and brasses doing this hymn. It is magnificent. It isn't the only thing we'll do, but I would love to be able to do it along with some other possibilities.

Does anybody here have a link to that arrangement or a similar one?

talleyrand wrote:One thing that's come up in my conversations is the Vaughan Williams "Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending".

Even if my focus, hymnwise, is on Danish hymns and their relations to the Nordic and Continental European traditions, my curiosity was alerted by the above posting. I didn’t know this British hymn, but went listened to several YouTube versions. I found a midi version, which I could convert to notes, but I couldn’t find much reference to its relationship with RVW, until I realised he had been the musical editor of the 1906 English Hymnal, which I was able to download in a scanned version. I attach the page, where Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending is presented in a 4-part setting. Is this the RVW setting of a 18th English melody, which you are referring to ?

Klaus

imperialbari wrote:

talleyrand wrote:One thing that's come up in my conversations is the Vaughan Williams "Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending".

Even if my focus, hymnwise, is on Danish hymns and their relations to the Nordic and Continental European traditions, my curiosity was alerted by the above posting. I didn’t know this British hymn, but went listened to several YouTube versions. I found a midi version, which I could convert to notes, but I couldn’t find much reference to its relationship with RVW, until I realised he had been the musical editor of the 1906 English Hymnal, which I was able to download in a scanned version. I attach the page, where Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending is presented in a 4-part setting. Is this the RVW setting of a 18th English melody, which you are referring to ?

Klaus

Yes, that's it. I don't think he wrote it, but he is credited with the harmonization, at least in the hymnal we use.

I don't know how to link to a piece in iTunes. But if you open the iTunes store and search with the string Wells Cathedral brass lo he comes, you'll see the arrangement I'm curious about. It starts with a fanfare and goes on from there to various sorts of accompaniment (including none on one verse).

I am entering this hymn setting into Finale right now. If nothing else I will apply my modular scoring used in my Danish hymn project, but also applied to two Norwegian, a Swedish, and an American hymn, so that it will become available to just about any permutation of instruments. If my ears come up with good ideas, I might make a more elaborate quintet arrangement based on this setting.

For RVW I would consider this setting quite conservative. One matter hardly found in the older chorale styles might be the the parallel leaping tenths between bass and tenor in bar #7. As far as I could hear from the old Arnold Jacobs recording of the 2nd movement of the concerto, RVW makes wide use of an effect also found here, the sus4 chord.

Klaus

imperialbari wrote:I am entering this hymn setting into Finale right now. If nothing else I will apply my modular scoring used in my Danish hymn project, but also applied to two Norwegian, a Swedish, and an American hymn, so that it will become available to just about any permutation of instruments. If my ears come up with good ideas, I might make a more elaborate quintet arrangement based on this setting.

For RVW I would consider this setting quite conservative. One matter hardly found in the older chorale styles might be the the parallel leaping tenths between bass and tenor in bar #7. As far as I could hear from the old Arnold Jacobs recording of the 2nd movement of the concerto, RVW makes wide use of an effect also found here, the sus4 chord.

Klaus

Excellent!

Musica wrote:Hey again,
I was looking at my computer files just now and I have arrangements and originals that I think you would like. These, like the one piece we discussed are all formatted in Finale. If I send you the Finale file, can you open them and print them? Do you want things like Carol of the Bells (quintet)? Have a good weekend.
M

Wow, that would be great. I don't personally have Finale, but our horn player does. I can put the files on a USB drive and she can print them. Thanks!

I have an arrangment of In the Bleak Midwinter if you like RVW, some other nice stuff too. I did an arrangment of the Pastoral symphony from the Messiah which is very nice also.
email me or pm me if you want more info.

ken

Beltway Brass has some fantastic Christmas arrangements:

http://beltwaybrass.com/sheetmusic.htm

They aren't your traditional arrangements, Jolly Old St. Nicholas is laid over the bass line from Pachelbel's Canon, and a lot of the rest have a definite jazz feel to them. But i can't think of more unique settings of some Christmas favorites.