Summer joke for tuba quartet

[imperialbari]

It may be known that recorders were among the instruments I used to teach. I am not too happy with its historic repertory and much of its modern repertory.

However it is a pleasant instrument in many less loud contexts and very good for playing melodies and countermelodies in folksy environments. The curse of the instrument is that many buy a cheap soprano and at once consider themselves musicians.

My pragmatism in between clashes with the sectarians, who create niches for themselves playing in A=466, 415, or 392. I have instruments in three of these pitches myself but only one soprano in A=392 and one alto in A=415, whereas the two dozens others in 7 sizes all are in A=440.

One night early this month such thread collided with a quest for arrangements of In an English Country Garden. On the web I found one for guitars, which was immediately readable for recorders, but an expert told that arrangement was too close to Percy Grainger’s setting. Same night I had to scare off an intruder, who made it to my bedroom/office door after wrecking the frame of my bathroom window.

It belongs to the equation, that my ears were overloaded with the said tune some 45 years ago.

Revenge time: I made a somewhat complex setting of that old ear wrecker for recorders from 3 different pitch references (these are a semitone apart) so basically I wrote for recorders in C, B natural, and Bb, which is possible to perform for good players.

That setting, in its MIDI version, had its following, so I wrote a simple version and a tango also. Point is that the melody isn’t changed at all.

This afternoon I found a key making these three settings possible for a good tuba quartet. Three sample page are at the bottom of this posting. The .pdf and MIDI files are in my Yahoo based project of making arrangements available for free:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Yo ... 20Quartet/

Klaus

[tubainty]

What is the suggested tempo for this piece?

[imperialbari]

As the tune is a traditional, I purposely left that to the players.

My MIDI’s for control listening were at quarter note=100 for the two non-tango versions and at quarter note = 88 for the tango version. Real instruments likely would get away with playing a bit slower without being perceived dragging.

Klaus

[imperialbari]

Added versions for a quartet of 3 bassoons and a contrabassoon:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Yo ... 20Quartet/

Same musical content, only the two top lines are written in Tenor Clef concert, which may be preferred also by some euphonium players. 3rd bassoon is bass clef like with the bass tuba, whereas the the contrabassoon has the bass line written an octave higher than the contrabass tuba has. As I hate ledger lines, and as I basically still prefer to read like I did with bass trombone and euphonium, that contrabassoon part would be my own preferred reading for BBb tuba (I have a CC, but don’t read that one sufficiently well).

The two low wind versions so far allow mixed performances of brasses, bassoons, and also low strings, which may be relevant for at campfire stunt.

Next will be a version for 2 bass clarinets, contralto clarinet, and contrabass clarinet. That version also will work for 2 euphs, Eb tuba, and BBb tuba, all in brass band treble clef notation.

Klaus