Choral Choir (SATB) - Level 3 - Digital Download
SKU: A0.835452
Composed by Stuart Brown. 20th Century,Contemporary,World. Octavo. 211 pages. Stuart Brown Music #5990681. Published by Stuart Brown Music (A0.835452).
A fantastic offer price for the full score and all parts! ... Looking for something to add a sense of oriental exoticism to your amateur orchestral/choral concert? This may be what you're looking for! This charming little suite of six dances lasts about 15½ minutes. It consists of a Pavane, Bourée, Sarabande, Allemande, Basse Danse and Galliard, which vary widely in character. As a whole the suite provides some interesting challenges for both performers and listeners. Apart from conventional strings, flute and harp (which can be either pedal or lever) you will need:
- One or maybe two Arabian ouds. The parts are playable also on a fretless acoustic guitar. (Needs to be fretless because of the quarter-tones in some of the Arabic modes used.)
- A cimbalom (the part can be played on a piano also, with slight modification). You might get away with using a hammered dulcimer but you'd need to make a number of compromises.
- A doumbek and a djembe. These beautiful drums are a must for Middle-Eastern or African music. They're fairly easy to find, though finding somebody who can play them properly may take a bit more doing!
- Finger cymbals and a gong. These are regular western instruments.
- A wind-chime. Anything that produces a nice shimmering spangle of sound will probably do!
- A group of singers (SATB). Nothing particularly challenging but see below.
The primary oud part, the strings and the singers need to have sufficiently good intonation to pitch quarter tones. These are the exception rather than the rule, but nevertheless play an important part in the character of the music. Apart from this, the music is relatively straightforward and probably playable by any reasonably competent amateur or high school orchestra.
In the spring of 2020 I wrote a set of short music tracks for a charity of which I'm a trustee. In order to protect my intellectual property rights in the music, I decided to bring it together into an attractive if not intellectually challenging little suite, hence An Omani Dance Suite. Originally the dances were all in Arabic quarter-tone temperament, but obviously quarter-tones cannot be played easily (if at all) on the flute, harp and cimbalom. So I have made some adjustments but retained the Arabic temperament wherever reasonably possible. I had thought initially of using a santur instead of a cimbalom, but the santur lacks the range and the dynamic capability to be used with a string chamber orchestra. The cimbalom doesn't need to be a concert grand model; in fact it doesn't even need to have dampers.
The Omani was something of an afterthought: a musician friend of mine had worked in Oman and commented on how authentically Omani the Basse Danse sounded. The period of composition coincided with a time when I was really missing friends in Vietnam and Romania, so somehow influences from those countries found their way into the music.
I'm not bothering with performing rights for this - just go away and enjoy the music! ... but if it inspires you find out more about the charity work that inspires me, feel free to get in touch!
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