A Setting of America the Beautiful-This setting of 'America The Beautiful' was first performed on March 11 1967 in the Air Force Academy Chapel near Colorado Springs only a few miles from where in 1983 Katherine Lee Bates wrote the first lines of her now famous poem certainly the most beautiful and moving of all hymns to America. The occasion was a concert given by the choral and brass groups of the University of Colorado for the Music Educators National Conference Southwest Division.The setting is concieved as a unified dramatic whole using melodic motives from the Samuel A. Ward tune in the introduction and connecting sections. Each of the four stanzas is treated differently their powerful emotion and meaning culminating in the final affirmation and prayer of the last stanza which is sung in unison with descant and full accompaniment.The work may be performed with an Organ (or Piano accompaniment or with a group of instruments consisting of 3 Trumpets in Bb 4 Horns in F 3 Trombones Euphonium and Tuba.Instrumental parts available from the publisher.
