Curious about the Lord of the Rings Symphony

[mikebmiller]

DeMeij is very active on FB. Why not ask him?

[Art Hovey]

Band music from that Dutch publisher usually comes with tuba parts that are transposed like trumpet parts but in bass clef. We recently discovered that a euph part was also transposed. The tuba parts that most of us would prefer are labelled as "C Tuba".

Reading string bass music down an octave is much easier than un-transposing "Bb" parts, in my opinion. We have played the Lord of the Rings more than once. If had to take it down an octave I wouldn't remember. All I remember is it's a great piece of music.

[WilliamVance]

...
Reading string bass music down an octave is much easier than un-transposing "Bb" parts, in my opinion. We have played the Lord of the Rings more than once. If had to take it down an octave I wouldn't remember. All I remember is it's a great piece of music.

I played this with this piece three years ago. You won't be disappointed and neither should your audience!

[Mark Horne]

My band did the whole work in 2016 and it is indeed a very rewarding piece to play - a lot of skill is required on certain parts. I don't recall if the C tuba part required octave transposition - I alternated between the tuba and string bass part to ensure everything was covered. The only change we made was to play the sustained low C's in the second movement 8vb as pedal tones. I had seen a performance directed by de Meij himself where the pedal tone was played and it's a good effect.

Our local TV station covered the concert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtOVS_Y ... WcssbOMic_" target="_blank" target="

Lord of the Rings starts at about the 40 minute mark.

[mikebmiller]

We played the condensed version last fall. I wold love to do the whole thing sometime, but I think it is very expensive to rent.

[The Brute Squad]

Reading string bass music down an octave is much easier than un-transposing "Bb" parts, in my opinion.

A huge wrench in the gears is that there are parts in the Bb part that aren't in the C part. I noticed that when I played it a few years ago. Luckily, I don't think there are that many, and a couple had cues in the C part.

To OP's question: they are definitely written an octave up from what should be played.

[bort]

I've played the whole thing a few times, both with and without narration. It's okay, and the first time through is a lot more fun than the 6th or 7th.

One of the problems I've noticed is that it's a challenging piece to play well, but an approachable piece to play so-so. Meaning, you hear a lot of good and bad versions of it.

Also, as with most deMeij pieces, it's a thick instrumentation, and it sounds best as written. When I did this in college, with a full ensemble with solid players throughout... and all of the low reeds in the right numbers, right number of horns, trumpet/cornet/flugel/whatever they use... It really sounded a whole lot better. More than most pieces.

For XYZ community band, that may or may not even have a single bassoon, let alone a good one, and for sure not a contrabassoon... It's just a different piece of music IMO.

Not trying to be too critical here, but I think it is deceptively simple. And as something more complicated, not my first choice to extend that amount of effort.

Worst part, when the movies were all coming out, everyone wanted to play this in every group. And then people were disappointed it wasn't music from the movie.

[Tom]

Worst part, when the movies were all coming out, everyone wanted to play this in every group. And then people were disappointed it wasn't music from the movie.

Yep...I played it a few times around the same time period.

I still remember people asking when we were going to play the parts from the movie and the audience being confused that they weren't hearing the Howard Shore score from the (at the time only one) movie.

As for the earlier part of your post, bort, I agree, but it goes way beyond that. Many groups play music that is too difficult for the group as a whole or that they do not have the proper instrumentation for...and those pieces always sound better played by 'good' groups with the proper instrumentation. This piece just seems to be one of those that gets called up often and attempted by a wide range of groups with all manner of instrumentation. It is what it is...

[bort]

This piece just seems to be one of those that gets called up often and attempted by a wide range of groups with all manner of instrumentation. It is what it is...

Very true. I think that, plus it's popularity kind of worked together...

Otherwise, I don't mind the instrumentation issues much, or even at all. That's just life, work with what you've got!

I mean, how many people have actually performed Grainger tunes with a full sarussaphone section?