We are performing Pie Jesu in our may concert. This post will give both you and me a deeper look into the song and more information about it. The version we are playing is written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and arranged by Anne McGinty.
Andrew Lloyd Webber:
Pie Jesu:
1. What were the benefits of performing in this concert? Musical? Other? (What did you learn?)
Just for starters this concert has given me more performance experience. In band performing is a huge part of the curriculum. Because it is both a big part of our grade and our musical life, it is important to learn how to play in front of a crowd. The only way to truly learn this is by gaining performance experience and getting used to performing. I also learned to listen to others playing to create a good blended and balanced sound.
2. Did you grow as a musician as a result of the concert and preparation process? Why or why not?
I did grow as a musician due to this concert and preparation. When preparing for the concert we did a few critiques of recordings we took at practices. This definitely made me aware of errors in the band. As I said before, I started to listen more to others playing so the band itself would have a more blended and balanced tone. Its not that I hadn’t listed before its just that I have been listening more carefully now then before.
3. Did you grow or change in any non-musical ways as a result of the concert? How? Why or why not?
It made me not only more organized, but more professional in a sense. I feel i became more professional by watching deadlines and raising money. Also by obeying rules set by the instructors during practice.
4. What was your favorite part of the performance? Why?
My favorite part of the concert was the 1812 Overture. Maybe it was because I took part in writing the program notes and i had to research into it. However, there was a certain energy level put in by each of the band members that just made it a very wonderful performance of the song.
5. What would you change or do differently about this performance? Why?
I don’t think we needed any more time to perfect the tunes, and I believe that everyone did play to the best of their ability. I mean the only thing I could think of changing would have been for everyone maybe to have been more professional at rehearsals. That one bad rehearsal we had kind of threw us back a little bit and took a night away to work on the music as an ensemble.
6. What was the most difficult song for you? Why?
The most difficult song for me was The 1812 Overture. This song was just a long and demanding song with continuous runs that sometimes got a little bit annoying to play over and over again. It was also difficult because of all the transitions and time changes. It isn’t difficult in pieces however, it is just when you put it all together it becomes harder to play the same way.
7. What was the easiest song for you? Why?
The easiest song was The Battle Pavane, hands down. When you just look at it, all the rhythms and notes are very simple. Because that was so easy to perfect, we could move onto dynamic contrast very soon. That may have been the most difficult part of the song, to get everyone to crecendo and decrescendo together.
Over all it was a great performance. For this assignment from our Band director, check out his post.
About two years ago I downloaded a composing software that was great. It would create sheet music on the computer to print out and also playback the music that was created. This program was called Note Worthy Software and it is very helpful in creating your own tunes. Originally I was just playing around on the program to see how things worked, but I ended up creating a song. It is a four part tune written for flute, clarinet, french horn, and Tuba. I named it Wildflower after the unique sound that the computer gave each instrument. What I mean is when I played it back on the program (the recording attached) it was the sound I would expect to hear while watching a Wildflower dance in the wind upon a plain of grass. Here you can listen to my personal composition. It is short, but it was at first a trial and error piece. Overall I am pleased with the result and maybe I can soon build upon it to make it longer.
Currently, our small ensembles are working on Pachelbel’s Cannon and other tunes. One day when I was on youtube.com I came across this video on Kurt Hugo Schneider’s account and I thought it was so funny but also amazing. This video is part of a whole battle series between Kurt and Jake Bruene. This battle is all about playing a known song on an odd instrument or sound making device. Both of these musicians are extremely talented, and i am amazed when watching any video they put up.
Hope you guys like it as much as I do!
For our Band II class assignment, we had to critique recordings we had made at Monday night’s rehearsal. However, Monday night’s rehearsal didn’t go as smoothly as some hoped it would. There was a lack of energy in the Band itself. This made us not play to our full potential and not put emotion into the song. Our assignment asked the students in the Band II class to critique at least one of the song recordings we took at this pitiful rehearsal. I decided to critique Bach’s Prelude in Bb. This song had intonation, blend, and balance problems. Some of the intonation and balance problems both dealt with the same instrument; the piccolo flute. The piccolo flute was always heard, in some cases this would be good, but not when your playing louder than everyone else. This can also be considered a dynamic control problem. Not to tear apart the piccolo, but it wouldn’t be as bad if she played loud and in tune. However, she didn’t, she played both loud and out of tune, which turns into a blending problem. Instead of hearing this one blended melody; I hear everyone playing together and then I hear the piccolo flute. You could hear these problems greatly around the eighth note section where there is a staccato and then 3 slurred notes. She usually does play better so I wouldn’t suggest anything drastic to help her. This could have just been caused by not caring, which a lot of people didn’t because of the lack of energy. Another problems was the trumpets at that exact section. The trumpets have, what I hear to be, short quarter notes there. At first I didn’t notice this problem but after I listened more closely I could pick it out. The trumpets don’t blend together and do give off a full great sounding short quarter note. They make it sound funny, like they cant get it out at first. My only suggestion is to try and get a better tone when playing a short note like that and just practice playing scales or anything like that until you get a better tone quality. One they get a better tone quality they will sound more blended. This could have happened from some players not being able to get a good tone when playing a short note. These players that couldn’t do it would be the ones making the whole section sound bad. Overall the song just need a little more practice from certain individuals and a lot more energy.
See my Band Directors Post for more information about the assignment.
For my Band II Class each group of students was assigned a song from our repertoire for our upcoming concert. My group will be researching information about Tchaikovsky and his 1812 Overture. This will help us students learn more about the music we are playing, the time period it is from, and the composer of the piece. This assignment is explained in further detail in my Band Director’s post.
Composer Biography:
Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky(1840 – 1893)
His music is thoroughly Russian in character, but, although he was influenced by Balakirev and the ideals of the Russian nationalist composers ‘The Five’, he may be seen as belonging rather to the more international school of composition fostered by the Conservatories that Balakirev, leader of ‘The Five’, so much deplored.
Tchaikovsky played piano since the age of 5, he also enjoyed his mother’s playing and singing. He was a sensitive and emotional child, and became deeply traumatized by the death of his mother of cholera, in 1854. At that time he was sent to a boarding school in St. Petersburg. He graduated from the St. Petersburg School of Law in 1859, then worked for 3 years at the Justice Department of Russian Empire. One of his admirers, a Moscow Conservatory student Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova, was persistently writing him love letters. She threatened to take her life if Tchaikovsky didn’t marry her. Their brief marriage in the summer of 1877 lasted only a few weeks and caused him a nervous breakdown. He even made a suicide attempt by throwing himself into a river. In September of 1877 Tchaikovsky separated from Milyukova. She eventually ended up in an insane asylum, where she spent over 20 years and died. Tchaikovsky was ordered by the doctors to leave Russia until his emotional health was restored. He went to live in Europe for a few years. Tchaikovsky settled together with his brother, Modest, in a quiet village of Clarens on Lake Geneva in Switzerland and lived there in 1877-1878. There he wrote his very popular Violin Concerto in D. He also completed his Symphony No.4, which was inspired by Russian folk songs, and dedicated it to Nadezhda von Meck. From 1877 to 1890 Tchaikovsky was financially supported by a wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck, who also supported Claude Debussy. She loved Tchaikovsky’s music and became his devoted pen-friend. They exchanged over a thousand letters in 14 years; but they never met, at her insistence. In 1890 she abruptly terminated all communication and support, claiming bankruptcy. In 1883-1893 Tchaikovsky wrote his best Symphonies No.5 and No.6, ballets ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘The Nutcracker’, operas ‘The Queen of Spades’ and ‘Iolanta’. In 1888-1889, he made a successful conducting tour of Europe, appearing in Prague, Leipzig, Hamburg, Paris, and London. In 1891, he went on a two month tour of America, where he gave concerts in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. In May of 1891 Tchaikovsky was the conductor on the official opening night of Carnegie Hall in New York.
Links:
Period:
Late Romantic Period (1850 – 1900)
The Late Romantic period saw the blossoming of self-expression in music. This was especially evident in the music of Tchaikovsky, which reflected the inner turmoil and anguish of his life. Many composers felt that by the time Wagner died, Romanticism had reached its limits of expression. Toward the end of the Late Romantic period, many new and diverse musical styles began to emerge – notably, the nationalism of composers such as Sibelius and Elgar, the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, and the atonal modernism of Schönberg.
It was due to composers making music about what they felt, instead of trying to make things academically perfect but unemotional. While the music in both the early and late parts is “Romantic”, you can hear a definite transition from stuff which sounds “old” (like Beethoven), to pieces which could pretty much be a modern day film-score (like Tchaikovsky). In fact, people love Romantic music so much that most modern day “classical” music is still composed in this style. As the era progressed toward 1900, every aspect of the music became freer. Composers started experimenting with non-standard time signatures (like 5/4 in the 2nd movement of the Pathetique), non-standard instruments (like the celesta), and so on. They also started to use larger and larger orchestras, so that the music is more layered and textured, and generally has more subtleties.
Links:
The information about the song itself will either be on Barbara’s blog or will be posted on mine later tonight, or even tomorrow. Oh, and ignore all the links inside the paragraphs. That must have happened when I copied and pasted from the website, sorry.
Last Monday night, we had a concert band practice. We started out the practice with usual warm-up’s (playing around the circle of 4th’s and tuning). After this we went on to practice The Battle Pavane (to learn more about this tune, check out my post about The Battle Pavane). We ran through it a few time and breaking some parts down. We focused on dynamic control during the practice. After we ran through it a few more times, we began to record the the tune. This took a few tries because we sometimes got off to a messy beginning. Later in the week we listened to the recording in class. While we listened to it we critiqued our performance. When critiquing the song, we all found mistakes and mishaps that happened in the song. There were problems that ranged from intonation to blend and balance. Our performance of this simple tune could have been better. We simply need to improve upon our our performance of this song and fix our mistakes.
In class this week we worked on 3 tunes. The first was The Battle Pavane, the second was The 1812 Overture, and the third was Rigel. The first piece The Battle Pavane is a piece that I wrote about in an earlier post. I wrote about the history of this piece and the time period. I also included some recoding of other bands playing this song and information about the composer Tielman Susato. However there is not much to comment on about the practice being done on this piece in school. This tune is quite simple, but very moving. The first few times we played through it we mostly had the notes and rhythms down, however we do need to work on our dynamic contrast. This is something we should do with the whole band when we put it together on a Monday night rehearsal. The second tune, The 1812 Overture composed by Peter Iyitch Tschaikowsky, is much more difficult than The Battle Pavane. Since we have just gotten this song and haven’t practiced it much together, it isn’t that good. There are problems with notes and rhythms throughout the whole song and throughout the whole band. Since it is a new and more difficult song individual practice would be the best for everyone. The first goal everyone should set for themselves is to get all the notes and rhythms down. Once that is done the band can truly work out the major problems and add the dynamics and expression into the piece. The third piece, Rigel, is the first movement from Winter Sky and it was composed by our own band director S. Puchinsky. Rigel is a fast moving piece that is difficult when played at such a fast tempo. When we began to practice it our class split up into 2 separate groups, the flutes and the clarinets. The flutes took the piece apart, playing it section by section. We took it at a much slower tempo so we could learn the notes and rhythms and play them correctly. This piece has 2 flute parts, flute 1 and flute 2. The biggest problem we encountered was getting the 2 parts to stay together. One part sometimes started moving faster than the other or one part got lost. Eventually we overcame that problem and moved on in the song. However, all 3 songs are new to the band or ensemble and need to be practiced.
The Battle Pavane, written by Tielman Susato, is a symbolic song from the Renaissance time period. This tune also happens to appear in my Band’s spring repertoire for our March performance. I choose to do research on this song, out of our entire repertoire, because I personally am moved by the Renaissance period. The Renaissance period shows rebirth of everyone’s lives and ideas. This period is filled with new music and art that are completely astonishing. During the Renaissance period, creativity came alive and played its part in the arts.
Cypress Creek High School Band performs The Battle Pavane
The Columbus State University Trombone Choir performs The Battle Pavane
History of The Battle Pavane and Tielman Susato
Renaissance Art!
Tielman Susato (The composer of The Battle Pavane)
Cimorelli is a band of 6 sisters that I found over the summer. They are incredible and mostly sing covers. They recently came out with their first EP on iTunes. It had just reached #6 on the iTunes pop charts. This band of sisters can be found on youtube.com. When singing they harmonize, sing instrumental parts, and sing back-up to whoever else is singing. They all have unique but wonderful voices. My favorite singers of the group are Lisa, Lauren, Christina, and Amy. That only really leaves out 2 of the other sisters, whose voices I do not favor, Dani and Katherine. However when they all come together it is pure magic. Two of my favorite covers by them are “Skyscraper” and “Firework”. Check this band out, they are truly amazing.
This is also their original song that is on their EP:
CHECK THEM OUT!
Entertained by music
Love to perform with others
Intimidated by large groups
Zodiac signs is something I like
A day-dreamer
Big plans and dreams are something I hope to achive
Enthusiastic to play flute or any other instrument
Thinking of the future or things I hope will happen is something I do a lot
Hope to one day persue a career related to music
I happen to play flute. I also would like to acomplish many goals that I have set for myself somethime in the future. I have plans for a career that is related to music. I hope to become successful and live out all my dreams.
Recent Comments