Notes on style and then some

Listening to a lot of euphonium on youtube in the last few days. I heard a few euph+piano duos and they are uniformly amazing. Here are a few: Piazzolla's Café 1930 and Ibert's La cage de cristal by Anthony Caillet, Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata; Badinerie and Chiapanecas on tuba.
I also listened to several examples of baritone as a part of jazz combo and found it rather underwhelming. The deep rich sound that complements solo piano so well tends to get lost somewhere in the sonic muck and in general sounds rather out of place.

Also, today I learned of anime series about euphonium. I... uh... am struggling to find words... Actually, instead of trying to come up with something meaningful to say, I think I'll just up and move to Japan.

Mozart - Horn duos

I recently discovered Mozart's horn duos and I love them; no. 4 and 6 in particular are great. The duos are written for a high and a low horn, whatever those are, but they fit well on trumpet and mellophone (Bb and Eb); so my transcriptions will also work for two saxes. I just finished the sixth (menuetto), might put up some of them in the next week. Others transcribed them before; someone is selling a two-trumpet transcription book on ebay.

Unfortunately, I could not find any commercial recording for these - unlike Bach's Inventions, for which there are at least a dozen recordings out there. I have to guess at the tempos from the titles (larghetto - must be sort of slow) and my technical limitations (the 16th-note run - can only play it so fast). I also wish I could hear the articulation and phrasing...

P.S. I stand corrected: the duos are available as a part of Marriner and AoSMitF's Wind Divertimienti recordings. They are truly beautiful, the horns almost sound like a piano. Here they are: mediafire.

Yay marimba!

I've heard that Bach's solo cello suites were done on marimba and was wondering how that sounds. That's still a mystery, but meanwhile the curious can check out Mozart's Flute Quartet done on five marimbas:
W. A. Mozart - Flute Quartet No.1 in D Major K285,
I. Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Rondeau

UPDATE 12/17/2013: A mystery revealed - BACH Cello Suite No. 5 for Marimba - Jisu Jung

Bach's Prelude No.1

This is, of course, one of the most famous Bach pieces - the opening prelude to his Well-Tempered Clavier book I, BWV 846. It's been called an encapsulation of the entire WTC and is a favorite of music theorists; there are multiple contrafacts on it, most famous being Gounod's Ave Maria. It is a favorite of classical piano and guitar players for being a sequence of arpeggios and thus relatively easy to play. Of course, that's exactly what makes it *hard* to play on a trumpet. This would be my "some day" piece, along with Tempo di Minueto from Partita No.5 - that thing is hardcore...
I had to transpose it to E and also move the bass notes up in bars 32-33 to fit it to a trumpet range. Obviously, the bass notes cannot be sustained under the arpeggios, so it's all in sixteenths. Here it is on Scribd.

Linkety link

Complete solo analysis on Coleman Hawkins' Rainbow Mist.

"Louis Licks" and XIXth century Cornet Etudes: The Roots of Melodic Improvisation as Seen in the Jazz Style of Louis Armstrong, by Peter Ecklund (PDF). A great article on the connections between the early jazz vocabulary and the "parlor music" of the time.

A collection of the compositions by Ornette Coleman

A crosspost from my other blog


A collection of the compositions by Ornette Coleman, edited and transcribed by Gunther Schuller. Includes Bird Food, Chronology, Congeniality (with a transcribed solo), Face of the Bass, Focus on Sanity, Forerunner, Free, Lonely Woman, Peace, Una Muy Bonita. These are off of The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) or Change of the Century (1960) LPs.

Invention No.2 in C minor from 15 Two Part Inventions by JS Bach

Here's a second invention from Bach's 15 Two-Part Inventions. For trumpet and baritone, i.e. left hand written in treble clef an octave up. Transposed to B minor - it defeats Bach's instructional purpose of a musical piece for every key, but since I am not doing all of them, it does not matter.
Voices together or separate. The last five bars of left hand (the baritone part) are also transposed an octave up, as they were out of range.

Durch Adam's Fall ist ganz verderbt - JS Bach

Here's a brass quartet arrangement of Bach's Durch Adam's Fall ist ganz verderbt for two trumpets, Eb mellophone (sheet music says "horn in F", but it's an artifact of Finale), and baritone, separate parts. Horn and baritone parts are written in treble clef an octave up. TTC's lectures on Bach specifically mentioned this chorale, a dissonant, chromatic work. According to the lectures, "the sinuous, winding tenor line represents the serpent" etc.

A piano transcription, played by Markus Becker and also a string quartet arrangement by Quartetto Italiano di Viole da Gamba:

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Invention No.1 in C major, from 15 Two Part Inventions - JS Bach

I was reading about Lennie Tristano the other day. His students/bandmembers Warne March and Lee Konitz sometimes opened the gigs by playing Bach's two-part inventions arranged for two saxes.
I tried to do a brass arrangement; unfortunately, it's impossible to do for two trumpets, as the pieces span a range over an octave greater than trumpet's range. However, the first one works nicely for trumpet and baritone/euphonium (I choose from the instruments I have and can play). Only the last D of bar 6 is out of range; I transposed the whole phrase (last two beats of bar 6, b-c-d-D) as I wanted to preserve that octave leap.
I guess it can also work for trumpet/trombone or various saxophone combinations.
Here it is: both voices together or separate voices.
Note they are written in C, so if played by a Bb trumpet, they would sound in concert Bb.

JS Bach - Badinerie from Orchestral Suite no.2 in B minor

A stock show-off piece for flautists. It's catchy, fast, and high, and so is also a favorite for trumpet players. I have versions by Alison Balsom, Ole Edvard Antonsen, and Maurice André, who all seem to compete as to who can play it the fastest and the highest. I transcribed it for trumpet from the full score, moving it down from Bmin to Gmin.
Transcription

I will include an Alison Balsom version, which I really like, and also a version by Altamiro Carrilho, who plays it as a choro, dramatically slower and groovier; an approach opposite from everyone else, but I think it works great.
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Altamiro Carrilho - Chorinhos Didaticos para Flauta

This is from Chorinhos Didaticos para Flauta, a collection of etudes in the choro style by Altamiro Carrilho, a notable Brazilian flutist. Chorinho No.1, trumpet transcription (i.e. transposed down a fifth). I hope to do more as I make my way through the book; might add a backing track in the future.

Saraiva - Alegria de Campeões

An obscure choro piece, works nicely as an etude. This transcription is in concert pitch, but for trumpet it might be easier to play the notes as written.
Transcription

Hear it:
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Bach's Cello Suites

Jay Lichtmann's most excelent site with a wealth of sheet music for trumpet, trombone, and brass ensembles, including trumpet transcriptions of Bach's first three Unaccompanied Cello Suites @. There's also a full transcription for trombone with a very thorough commentary article at Doug Yeo's site.
I am not nearly advanced enough to play the Cello Suite transcriptions, so instead I am listening to as many versions as I can. So far the interpretation I like the most are Edgar Meyer's double bass transcriptions. He treats the dances as dances, with a steady pulse underneath. Most of the trad cellists play them rubato, one phrase at a time, which makes it difficult for me to follow. Pablo Casals, the presumably greatest-of-them-all godfather of Bach's Cello Suites, really goes overboard with this approach, so it sounds more like a free jazz solo than anything else - try dancing a menuet or allemande to Casals and you'll break your legs.
I also got a pile of other cello versions as well as a transcription for guitar and another one for flute (only the first three, though). Alison Balsom does Sarabande and Gigue from the second suite on her Bach For Trumpet album, and they are OK - she arpeggiates the chords, which must be crazy difficult to play and doesn't sound so good, IMHO.
Now I want to hear the suites on marimba!