SKU: A0.836702

It’s a brave musician who, armed only with a piccolo, is willing to walk onto a stage strewn with the assorted weaponry of a determined percussionist. One’s confidence can be shaken to the point of asking, who is the soloist here, anyway?

But the rewards for courage are great: where else will you find bongos, a harpsichord and a piccolo performing together? How many times do you come across a military march in 3/4 time? In what other circumstances would Goldilocks intrude on the Seven Dwarves? What more could you ask?

Percussion required (one player): marimba, glockenspiel, field drum, bongos, suspended cymbal with yarn sticks, sleigh bells, maracas (1 or 2, one hand).

Piccolos required: one (1).

The score assumes a five-octave double-manual harpsichord, but adjustments can be made to accommodate a single without appreciable harm to the music.

The audio file accompanying this blurb features snippets of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th and 7th movements.  

Performance time is approximately 12 minutes. Good luck!

SKU: A0.836714

New for the 2019 Christmas Season, here is a Noël (a set of variations of a type popular in the French Baroque) on a somewhat less well known Advent Carol for manuals only.  

Venez, divin Messie (O Come Divine Messiah) is an anonymous 16th century tune to which Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin added the words in the early 18th century. It is a charming melody and this new setting will provide organists with a little something beyond the ordinary Advent/Christmas fare.

Originally conceived for harpsichord, this piece easily makes the transition to organ manuals. Performance time is between 9 and 10 minutes depending largely on the acoustics of the room.

The attached audio file will tell you everything there is to say about the music. You will hear the entire tune plus the beginning and ending of each variation.

SKU: A0.836715

A Violin Sonata written in 2019, but which sounds more like 1869? There’s a reason for that: apart from the obvious and enjoyable challenge of writing an extended faux-19th century piece, the sonata is dedicated to the memory of my mother who - being a Brahms & Tchaikovsky gal through and through - had little use for music written after 1900. For instance, I remember when I was a lad and my father and I would listen to Stravinsky’s Le Sacre, Mom would always go out for a walk until it blew over.

The Sonata has four movements: I. Largo-Moderato (7:10), II. Allegretto (5:00), III. Andante (7:00), IV. Bagatelles. Allegro non troppo (6:00). Total performance time is about 25 to 26 minutes.

The audio file accompanying this description gives you a couple of minutes of each movement: most of the exposition of I; the end of the Scherzo and beginning of the Trio (with its curious three-measure phrases) of II; the closing measures of III; and the beginning of IV.

(The sonata has been read by professional players and is guaranteed to work, but at this writing it has not been performed or recorded. Therefore the audio file is only a computer playback. Living musicians will be able to make far more sense of it.)

SKU: A0.836708

Full disclosure: This work is frankly atonal. Rhythms are tricky. Harmonies are unconventional to say the least. And even the form is nicely aberrant.

Yet something magical happens when writing for winds: because of the weak timbre contact between the different instruments, one can write complex textures without losing clarity. One can write dissonant harmonies without having them sound harsh and grating. In fact, there are moments of surprising beauty here. Take for instance the color canons, passages combining all instruments in clusters whose harmonic and rhythmic motion is essentially static, but which shimmer with ever-changing timbres.

The title translates - inexactly - to Keeper of Heaven, or Starry Watchman, or Celestial Caretaker, and refers to an imaginary character whose task it is to walk about the heavens at sunset and turn on the stars. He is the galactic equivalent of the old gentlemen who once went about Victorian streets, lighting the gas lamps and generally keeping an eye on things, making sure that all is well. I do not claim that this character is God the Father Almighty, only that he is an old gentleman. But there might very well be something wizard-ish about him!

Performance time is approximately seven and a half minutes. The audio excerpt included here is of the last two minutes, where the music comes the closest to being tonal.

SKU: A0.836707

What’s Christmas without a few toys?

Here is a new suite of older carols for string quartet in which each musician is required to play a wee bit of percussion in addition to his or her real instrument. The potential for entertaining visual theater is nearly as high as the potential for mishap. (If all goes according to plan, nothing should actually go airborne.)

This is something of a sequel to my earlier Christmas quartet And Therefore Be Merry, which has never been out of print since it was first published over twenty years ago. But where that work was a continuous medley, this is a set of independent and more fully developed movements, each able to stand on its own.

As mentioned above, each member of the quartet is responsible for a small item of percussion. These are all things which could readily be found in a local school band room: a triangle, a tambourine, a suspended cymbal - played with a soft (yarn) stick - and a small frame drum, played with the bare hand.

These are all earlier, earthier carols than what one typically finds on the radio or playing over the speakers at the mall. They include Gloucestershire Wassail, Riu Riu Chiu, Angelus ad Virginem, The Sans Day Carol, The Wexford Carol, and Masters in This Hall. Being perhaps less familiar, they bring a welcome respite from the overworked seasonal fare we all hear a bit too much of each year. They speak of simpler times, and of a far less frantic approach to Christmas. These fresh and inventive arrangements will make a useful addition to a quartet’s repertoire, provided the players have the requisite spirit of adventure.

Score and Parts total 67 pages. Performance time is about 14 minutes.

SKU: A0.836717

A sister volume to my Shorter English Preludes (also for manuals only), this new set treats in similar fashion some tried-and-true general purpose hymns of German origin. Included are Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice, Jesus Lives and So Shall I, Let Us Ever Walk With Jesus, Come, Let Us Join Our Cheerful Songs, If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee, and All Glory Be to God on High. Each Prelude fits on one or two pages (no page turns required) and none is over two minutes in length. As always, sources and timings are included for your planning purposes and the score prints in landscape format.

SKU: A0.836716

For many years I have enjoyed playing the simpler manualiter chorale preludes of Zachau and J. G. Walter in the old Peters edition many organists will be familiar with. Then there are the delightful little preludes of Ernst Pepping which I first heard as a teenager in a recording by E. Power Biggs. I had something of a cross between these two influences in mind for this new set of English preludes. There are some finger-twisting moments here and there, but by and large these manuals-only pieces are meant to be shorter, more direct, and simpler (in concept, if not execution!) than my larger sets of preludes. The hymns dealt with here represent a useful mix of liturgical purposes and include Holy, Holy, Holy!, Come, Thou Almighty King, When Morning Gilds the Skies, Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates, All Things Bright and Beautiful, Beneath the Cross of Jesus, The Church’s One Foundation, and Christ the Lord is Risen Today. As always, sources and timings are included and the score prints in landscape format.