Woodwind Ensemble,Woodwind Quintet - Level 4 - Digital Download SKU: A0.553729 Composed by Leon Jessel. Arranged by Ray Thompson. 20th Century,Children,Christmas,Standards. 24 pages. RayThompsonMusic #3588401. Published by RayThompsonMusic (A0.553729). Leon Jessel, or Léon Jessel (January 22, 1871 – January 4, 1942) was a German composer of operettas and light classical music pieces. Today he is best known internationally as the composer of the popular jaunty march The Parade of the Tin Soldiers, also known as The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers. Jessel was a prolific composer who wrote hundreds of light orchestral pieces, piano pieces, songs, waltzes, mazurkas, marches, choruses, and other salon music. He achieved considerable acclaim with a number of his operettas - in particular Schwarzwaldmädel(Black Forest Girl), which remains popular to this day.Because Jessel was a Jew by birth (he converted to Christianity at the age of 23), with the rise of Nazism in the late 1920s, his composing virtually came to an end, and his musical works, which had been very popular, were suppressed and nearly forgotten.In Great Britain the piece was used for many years in BBC radio's Children's Hour to introduce the series Toytown, based on stories by S. G. Hulme Beaman. This arrangement could be performed as a lighter item in a Christmas Concert, or even as a Classical Christmas piece.It is arranged for double wind quintet and opt. bass.(double bass or tuba)
